A new album only four years after their last release? At The Gates are almost returning to their productivity levels of the early-to-mid 1990s. To Drink From The Night Itself (Century Media) is the second album since the Swedish Melodic Death Metal pioneers reformed in 2008, and sixth overall.
It’s the first without co-founding guitarist Anders Björler (also of The Haunted), who had departed from the band in March 2017, and first to feature guitarist Jonas Stålhammar. But despite the departure of such a key member, the band still manage to create an album that sounds fresh, energetic, and heavy.
To Drink from the Night Itself isn’t the instant adrenaline rush of the band’s seminal 1995 classic, Slaughter of the Soul (Earache). Like it’s 2014 predecessor, At War With Reality, it is instead an album that combines and balances the crushing speed of classic ATG with a slower, darker material akin to the likes of Terminal Spirit Disease or With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness (both Peaceville).
While there’s very little to pick between them, To Drink From The Night Itself pips At War with Reality, if only just. To Drink… feels just a little leaner and better crafted than its predecessor. The band can still find the perfect balance between Death Metal groove, infectious Thrash, and an ear for a catchy melody. ‘In Nameless Sleep’ and ‘Daggers of Black Haze’ boast especially satisfying guitar solos, while ‘Palace of Lepers’ feels like it could be a crowd-pleaser live. The title-track and lead single is probably the most instantaneous and memorable of the songs on offer; furious drumming and catchy shredding making a powerful opening statement. From there the albums blitzes along: the likes of ‘Stare Bound in Stone’, ‘The Chasm’, and ‘Seas of Starvation’ all follow the classic template of brisk, moreish hits of heavy headbangers, all to great effect.
It’s not a perfect record, though. Melodeath is a style that’s been done to death – partly down to the influence of Tomas Lindberg & co. – and there’s little on here that the band or their imitators haven’t done before; ‘The Colours of the Beast’ is a forgettable mid-paced number, while there’s a few faster songs that probably have been trimmed without the listener missing anything. That being said, this album feels a lot shorter than its forty five minute runtime and still leaves you hungry for more.
To follow up Slaughter of the Soul with a new album nearly two decades later and come out with your head held high was an impressive enough feat.. And for the follow up to that album to be even better is more impressive still. Another quality entry in the At The Gates catalogue.
8.5/10
Dan Swinhoe