Review Summary: At the Gates deliver an album that isn't Slaughter of the Soul. Take that how you will.
Expectations can be a real bitch. Over the last few years there have been quite a few bands that have come back from breakups or extended hiatuses, and each has had to deal with their own over-inflated legacies. Some of them stick to touring and sidestep the entire issue, but others have risked the inevitable backlash by releasing new material. Artists such as Carcass have come back and actually enhanced their discographies with new music – others have not been so lucky. When At the Gates reformed they originally planned on sticking with a touring-only strategy, because their fans saw
Slaughter of the Soul as the second coming of melodeath Jesus. The band knew that any new music would be compared to the impossibly high standards set by fans riding high on nostalgia. Eventually they decided to release a new album anyway and the result is At the Gates’ first new music since 1995 –
At War With Reality – and it seems to have polarized the band’s fan base.
The biggest problem is that people are acting like
Slaughter of the Soul was At the Gates’ debut album and that it should be the sole source of inspiration for any new music. They seem to expect that the band would be content to reform after two decades just to rehash what is really their least interesting and least diverse album. There’s no other explanation to describe a majority of the disappointment surrounding
At War With Reality. It should come as a surprise to nobody that
At War With Realty doesn’t feature the youthful angst of
Slaughter of the Soul or the determined focus to become the
Reign in Blood of the melodic death metal world. It also doesn’t feature the sprawling structures of
With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness. In case you’re wondering, it also doesn’t feature Jesper Jarold (or anyone else) on violin.
At War With Reality is the band taking their last three albums and pulling elements from each in order to release an album that is 100% faithful to their past.
At War With Reality isn’t going to instantly grab you because there really isn’t an overarching motif for fans to latch onto. The speed is tempered by an equal number of mid-tempo sections, there’s just as much restraint as aggression and any experimentation was thrown out in favor of At the Gates by-the-numbers. Basically, there’s nothing that makes the album sound fresh or exciting, but it sounds like At the Gates. What else did people expect?
At War With Reality is an album by a band taking baby steps back into a genre they helped elevate twenty years earlier, and it’s really good. It has the melodic leads that At the Gates made commonplace; it also has solid riffs throughout and the throat-shredding rasp of Thomas Lindberg. It’s an album that an At the Gates fan should be able to hear and instantly know who it is.
There’s no doubt that
At War With Reality is a safe release that settles comfortably into the sound At the Gates championed over twenty years ago. It doesn’t do anything different, it doesn’t redefine the genre, it doesn’t help their legacy or surpass anything they’ve previously done, but it is a great release. Twenty years of hype has caused people to believe things that just aren’t true. There’s no doubt that
Slaughter of the Soul is a great album, but it didn’t gain cult status by being adventurous and experimental. It did it by cutting all the wanky bullshit that filled the 90s melodeath scene. So, it seems strange that people would suddenly expect something from the band that they’ve never really delivered.
At War With Reality is the type of album At the Gates have always made and it’s a great return to the scene the band helped make famous. Welcome back guys – in case you’ve forgotten, metal fans are a high maintenance, quick-to-bitch, group of people.
