Welcome to another edition of From My Collection. Yesterday, the metal world was rocked to its core with the news that Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg had passed at the age of 52. While his life was cut tragically short, Lindberg achieved more over the course of his career than most could in 10 lifetimes. His journey began in 1988, when as a teenager he fronted the groundbreaking black/death metal band, Grotesque, under the pseudonym Goatspell. Come the ’90s, his next venture, At the Gates, would become one of the most important acts in metal history, releasing four consecutive masterpieces and singlehandedly setting the stage for the 21st century modern metal scene. Aside from maybe Pantera, no other ’90s metal act was more influential. As the years went by, so did a brief stint with Swedish death-thrashers, The Crown, forays into the world of crust/grind (Disfear, Skitsystem, Lock Up), a supergroup (The Lurking Fear), and the eventual reunion of AtG. Today, we pay tribute to Tompa with a retrospective look back on the album that reintroduced AtG to the world, At War with Reality. Rest in power Tompa. “GO!”
As the name of this series is From My Collection, with an emphasis on “My” (someone’s gotta give Eddie Trunk a run for his money), allow me to reflect upon my own personal journey with At the Gates, if I may. Being straddled somewhere between gen Z and the millennials, my introduction to AtG was not via some cool burnout cousin who played Slaughter of the Soul for me at a young age in between bong hits and rounds of Halo, nor was it via scouring through my local CD store and being enamored by any particular album cover. No, my introduction to At the Gates was thanks to Rock Band.
At the earliest part of the ’10s, my general awareness of death metal didn’t go much further than Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Death, Carcass, and Deicide. There might’ve been the odd band here or there that crossed my radar. Exhumed had just reunited, so I remember hearing about them quite a bit. That said, I was far from a death metal savant. I didn’t know Immolation from Incantation! So when At the Gates’ “Blinded by Fear” made its way upon my living room TV screen, after its ominous intro, I found myself less enamored by trying to hit the matching colored “notes” and more enamored by the music itself. I knew it was death metal, but thought to myself, “Wow, this sounds unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.” Fast forward 15 years later and I still get that feeling when listening to At the Gates’s back catalog.
As the years went on, AtG became my be all, end all death metal band. I became obsessed with the albums, the lyrics, the liner notes, the lore. I’d befriend older metallists who’d seen their 2008 reunion tour at House of Blues, hoping that one day I too would have the opportunity to see my Swedish death metal heroes. While I’d have to wait a few years, said opportunity would arrive in 2015, as AtG reunited yet again, this time with a new album in tow: At War with Reality. While in hindsight, this album didn’t reach the creative heights of the band’s ’90s heyday, it is one that I look back upon with great nostalgia. Much like Rush’s Clockwork Angels or Carcass’s Surgical Steel, this was an album that belonged to me, so to speak, not past generations.
I vividly remember purchasing At War the week of its release, at the end of October, 2014, from Rolling Stones Records in the nearby Chicago suburb of Norridge. I couldn’t get home fast enough, eager to crack open the cellophane and drop this brand new slab of Swedish melo death majesty on my trusty ol’ turntable. As my dad pulled up to my house, I sprinted in through the door, ran upstairs, and did exactly that. As the needle dropped on the ominous intro, “El Altar Del Dios Desconocido”, I braced myself for what awaited, and was not disappointed. “Death and the Labyrinth” came storming in with all the trademarks of Slaughter of the Soul: Misanthropic Swedish death riffs, intense guitar melodies, and those unmistakable vocals of Lindberg. Boasting a blatant mosh breakdown at its halfway mark, I couldn’t help but think AtG drew influence from the very ’00s melo death/metalcore crop they spawned: A moment of the student teaching the teacher.
The title track kept the rampage going, blurring the line between high speed frenzy and midtempo devastation. Guitarists Martin Larsson and Anders Björler’s melodic leads had matured with age like fine wine, boasting a grim, foreboding edge as if to fuse the iconic melo death of Slaughter with the bleakness of the band’s earliest output. For “The Circular Ruins”, AtG adhere to a steady midtempo delivery, in which the riffs boast a brooding groovy edge, which is something I don’t think this band ever got enough credit for. Sure, they were never as blatant as their peers in Pantera or Machine Head, but they sure could groove when they wanted ot.
“Heroes and Tombs” further explores the band’s dark, atmospheric death metal roots, albeit through that melo death filter. It’s gloomy and foreboding, starting out gentle, the duo of Larsson and Björler weaving a tapestry of terror with their six string sorcery. “The Conspiracy of the Blind” picks up the pace, revisiting the Slaughter formula full stop, much like the title track. Like many cuts on here, it’s a textbook case of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”, serving as a slab of familiarity before the oddball “Order from Chaos” closes side A. All these years later, and I’m still not sure about this one. Avant-garde death? Perhaps. Good? Undecided.
As we flip over to side B, “The Book of Sand (The Abomination)” reenforces the groove-death amalgamation this band did so well when they wanted to, wielding punishing ferocity with one wall-puncher of a riff after the next. The violent thrashing insanity of “The Head of the Hydra” is yet another slab of Slaughter-flavored melo death madness, while the instrumental “City of Mirrors” further showcases the band’s knack for progressive otherworldliness. Seriously, revisit the Gardens of Grief demo if you want to hear how leftfield this band could get.
The clam of “City of Mirrors” is quickly dashed by the brutal “Eater of Gods”, which is another song that, for some reason, gives off post-SOTS vibes like the opening “Death and the Labyrinth”. Yet even in a landscape where bands like Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, and every scenecore Warped Tour band had laughed all the way to the bank utilizing the AtG formula, our heroes were still the masters of their craft. The brutal riff-driven frenzy of “Upon Pillars of Dust” recalls that of “Suicide Nation” nearly 20 years earlier, before the unsettling “The Night Eternal” closes things on a gothic, melodramatic note, again channeling the experimentation of the band’s demo days.
Upon its release, At War with Reality was universally hailed, and rightfully so. It wasn’t just a return to form from a band who’d been gone from the metal landscape for far too long, but a reclaiming of the throne. AtG would continue to record new music and tour the globe up until a couple years ago, when Lindberg’s health troubles put the band on hiatus. While his death almost surely marks the end of the band’s musical voyage, their impact and influence will live on for generations to come. After all, death is only the beginning of a new chapter, one beyond this mortal realm. Take it from Tompa himself…
“Terminal spirit disease
Terminal spirit disease
Your souls condemned to sing of life
Must die to be set free”