A bit of a quick one today to pay futher tribute to Tomas Lindberg. Today’s song is a cut from At The Gates’ debut album The Red In The Sky Is Ours, released in 1992.
Windows is the album’s fifth song. Nothing was released as a single, this was the band’s very early days and everyone was running on shoestring budgets. Band members have retroactively lamented the album’s production due to those financial constraints and having a producer that was not familiar with heavy metal. While I do agree that production here does leave something to be desired, it’s an album I can still get through and enjoy. Many of the underground metal albums of the early 90’s did not have the best in sonic technology.
The music of Windows was composed by guitarist Anders Björler. The lyrics were penned by vocalist Tomas Lindberg and are, at their simplest, about someone going insane. There is possibly more to it, as the song might be a eulogy for Per Yngve Ohlin, aka Dead, the singer of black metal band Mayhem until his suicide in 1991. Dead’s suicide brought a ton of attention to Mayhem and many were on hand for the wild and infamous ride that the second wave of black metal would go on during the early 1990’s.
I do not know if Lindberg was singing about Dead here, the lyrics do indicate it could be so, but I can’t readily find any actual sources corroborating this. It has been a widespread rumor for years and perhaps there’s some long lost interview with Lindberg that confirms this theory. But for the purposes of this brief post I’ll have to leave it as a loose thread.
Windows is a very heavy, crushing track that fits its disturbing subject matter. The song became an early favorite of fans and endured as one of the band’s signature tracks, even after the career and genre-defining Slaughter Of The Soul was released in 1995. Windows does have placements on a few live sets both audio and video, and is also a live bonus track on the band’s 1994 album Terminal Spirit Disease.
While we wait rather sadly for the final At The Gates album to feature Tomas Lindberg, it is nice to go back to the beginning and hear At The Gates crushing it right out of the, uh, gate. From very humble beginnings, At The Gates shaped the blueprint for metal that would come for decades afterward.
Today’s news is a tragic update to revelations we were privy to last month, when At The Gates announced they were preparing a new album and that singer Tomas Lindberg had a rare form of cancer. Sadly, that cancer has claimed Tomas’ life. Tomas was 52 years old.
Lindberg was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in October 1972. He would get started in music in the late 1980’s and joined up with the band Grotesque. A bit later Grotesque disbanded and Lindberg teamed up with several others to form At The Gates. From 1992 through 1995, At The Gates released four albums and became one of the beacons of melodic death metal, a movement largely centered on the Gothenburg area. Their fourth album Slaughter Of The Soul is hailed as one of the best albums of the 1990’s and was a massively influential album on heavy metal from the 2000’s, especially death metal and metalcore.
At The Gates unexpectedly broke up in 1996. After this, Lindberg spent the next decade-plus fronting a wide range of bands. He would join up with Disfear, The Crown, Nightrage, LockUp and many others. He also formed his own band The Great Deceiver, showcasing a unique blend of death metal and other styles. And he provided guest vocals to a dizzying array of bands all over the metal spectrum.
In 2008, At The Gates reunited for a series of tours. The band did not expand much upon the touring for several years, but then in 2014 they became a fully active band again and offered up At War With Reality, their first album in 19 years. At The Gates toured regularly and released two more albums in 2018 and 2021.
The information provided in Lindberg and At The Gates’ statement last month outlines the final few years of Lindberg’s life. In 2023 he was diagnosed with a rare form of throat and mouth cancer, which required major surgery. In early 2025 some remnants of the cancer were found, requiring very sensitive treatment that left Lindberg isolated. While we don’t have any further details regarding that, Lindberg died on or around September 16th.
Lindberg’s death has hit the metal community hard. At The Gates are revered as one of the of pioneering forces of the heavy metal that came about in the 2000’s and basically saved the genre from the extinction that almost occurred during the late 1990’s. Lindberg was well-respected among metal fans and artists, as evidenced by his miles-long list of guest contributions and the wave of tributes that have flowed in since the news of his death.
For me, At The Gates has long been one of my favorite bands. I was entirely taken with the concept of melodic death metal and have been on board for over 30 years since I first heard them. Slaughter Of The Soul is one of my favorite albums of all-time and the entire discography is one I go back to with frequency. It took me forever to see At The Gates live, which finally happened in 2018. Seeing them live essentially crossed off the final name on my “concert bucket list.”
Tomas Lindberg’s death will be felt as we go forward, especially given the news that At The Gates do have one final album with his vocals nearly ready for release. Condolences to Tomas’ family, friends, bandmates and fans worldwide.
I’ve just returned home from work and heard the tragic news that Tomas Lindberg has died at age 52. I will have a post honoring his memory in the coming hours. That tribute post is now live and available to read here.
There were two pieces of significant news last week. One involved the announced farewell album and tour of Megadeth, which I covered yesterday. Today’s post regards pioneering melodic death metal act At The Gates, who announced a new album but also an ominous update.
At The Gates have been back at it for a long time now since reforming in 2008. They have released three studio albums in that span and toured extensively. Things with the band have been pretty quiet since 2021’s album The Nightmare Of Being. For those who don’t recall (everyone but me, I’m sure), that album was my pick for 2021 Album of the Year.
Sadly, we’ve found out why the band has been so quiet the past few years. Singer Tomas Lindberg announced last Friday that he has been in a battle with a rare form of oral cancer. This blabbermouth.net article outlines the issues. He underwent major surgery and radiation therapy for it, and a reoccurence of the cancer was found earlier this year. Lindberg has been largely isolated through this time due to his treatments, and this obviously affects his ability to perform.
Clearly it is troubling times in the At The Gates camp, and Lindberg has stated he will remain secluded and not give interviews or any further information regarding his illness or treatment. This does also preclude the band from being able to perform.
One thing it won’t hamper, though, is a new album release. The band have been working on things for a few years and have a series of demo takes Lindberg recorded before his cancer saga. The group had hoped to wait until Lindberg was on the mend to release new music but with this updated news, they will go ahead and release the new album.
The album is also significant in that it marks the return of guitarist Anders Björler, a founding member of the group who had departed in 2017. This reunites Anders with his twin brother, bassist Jonas. Everyone in the band and fans were all looking forward to Anders’ return.
The news about Tomas Lindberg is harrowing, and hopefully he will find eventual healing as he goes along. There is some solace in us getting a new At The Gates album, which at this time we don’t have any details or time frame for. It is hollow in comparison to a cancer battle, but all there really is to do is hope for the best, respect Lindberg’s wishes for privacy, and jam out to the new album when it arrives.
Kicking off the new year with a whale of an album. This was a long-anticipated reunion record that actually managed to not only live up to the hype but exceed it. Playing together for six years before recording might have helped with that.
Carcass – Surgical Steel
Released September 2013 via Nuclear Blast Records
My Favorite Tracks – Thrasher’s Abbatoir, The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills, Captive Bolt Pistol
Discussing Carcass does require a bit of backstory to provide context for the reunion. Carcass were a pioneering band of the “extreme metal era” of the early 1990’s. Beginning as a grindcore outfit, the band morphed into a melodic death metal machine that captured attention with albums like Necrotism and especially Heartwork. The group dissolved in 1996 but got the reunion bug in 2007 and began touring again. After a series of very well-received tours the band shuffled a few members and set about recording their first album in nearly 20 years.
Bassist/vocalist Jeff Walker and guitarist Bill Steer were still around from the band’s heyday. Guitarist Michael Amott had been part of the reunion tours but left the band to focus on his main gig Arch Enemy. Original drummer Ken Owen was unable to rejoin Carcass due to health problems but would provide backing vocals on the record. He was replaced initially by Daniel Erlandsson from Arch Enemy, but Dan Wilding would join as the new drummer for the recording.
The album comes in with a fairly lean run time of 51 minutes but there are 12 tracks, 11 to discuss. Also, Carcass lyrics and titles are often dense and sometimes unclear in meaning so this will be fun.
Thrasher’s Abbatoir
After the instrumental intro 1985, Carcass kicks off its first new song in decades on a banging note. The song has a go at all of the -tion words, which was a common thing to laugh about in the early 90’s death metal scene with a million bands like Suffocation, Incantation and other -tions running around. The song is dreadfully simple yet brilliantly executed, Carcass is very much open for business again.
Cadaver Pouch Conveyor System
The Carcass lyric writing method often involves opening a medical dictionary and throwing a lot of words together. This is in full force here, as I have no clue what a cadaver pouch conveyor system is. I’m sure the other 8 billion people on the planet share my confusion. There is stuff about death and mutilation in the lyrics but this isn’t a concept album so I’ll say the song is great and move on.
A Congealed Clot Of Blood
The medical concept here is far more understandable, but the song is actually about holy war or some shit like that. Whatever – the riffs are massive and the hooks in plentiful supply and Carcass is bashing its way through its return album.
The Master Butcher’s Apron
The tempo slows down a bit here which helps take in the lyrics which are about the slaughter of humans, or perhaps the slaughter of animals or something. I don’t really know, it’s very dense stuff, just headbang to it.
Noncompliance To ASTM F899-12 Standard
It sounds really complicated but this is perhaps the most logical song title here. The F899-12 Standard, or whatever, is a series of guidelines for how surgical instruments can be manufactured. So, noncompliance with that would meant the surgical tools are substandard. The song itself is about death and stuff, which is a likely consequence of having subpar surgical equipment.
The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills
Ok, so maybe this one is actually the most logical and coherent of the song meanings presented. The Dark Satanic Mills refer to Industrial Revolution-era England and the soulless nature of the architecture and work. And, for once, the song’s lyrics have to do with the title. There’s some involvement with/influence from legendary English poet William Blake here too.
But wait, there’s more! The chorus of the song is simply a sequence of numbers and presents a mystery. The numbers are 6026961. This means nothing to anyone and wouldn’t even work as a set of lottery numbers. But, if you remove the 666 from the sequence, you’re left with 0291, which is apparently a code having to do with US livestock standards. This has never been confirmed as the “true” meaning but it seems the most logical option.
Also the song is fantastic, possibly the best on the album.
Unfit For Human Consumption
We have yet another pretty easy to grasp song here. It’s discussing the food supply and how nasty it can be, long a favorite topic of conversation for the vegetarian-minded Carcass members. The lyrics do get into pretty awful detail, which is fitting since this is death metal after all.
316L Grade Surgical Steel
This serves a sort of a title track. The song seems to actually be a break-up song rather than an essay about surgical steel.
Captive Bolt Pistol
More about the food supply here, this is the device which is meant to instantaneously kill livestock with a blow to the head. The song does not sing the praises of the device.
Mount Of Execution
We depart the world of medical supplies and the food chain for a look at religion’s ills. The song is slower paced and very nicely done, with somber guitar work and a methodical vocal delivery. The song is a beefy one at over 8 minutes and changes tack toward the end, leaving out on a militant riff.
Intensive Battery Brooding
We end the album on yet another “what are you talking about?” title. The song is actually about a thing called Blue Peacock, which was a British Cold-War era idea to use live chickens as a way to keep landmine wiring warm. The mines were going to be planted to halt a Soviet Army advance across Europe. Oh, and the mines were nuclear. What a stupid fucking idea.
In other news, this song was actually a bonus track on certain CD editions of the album. It’s included on the Spotify version so I kept it on here.
Surgical Steel was a hit out of the gate. It was a brilliant return to recorded form for one of extreme metal’s most hallowed bands. This genre of music doesn’t often hit sales charts but this album did break through on several nations’ charts, including both the US and UK.
The critical reception to the album was very positive and fan reaction was tremendous – people were over the moon that the new album was not only good but one of the best the band had done. In a cynical music world where reunions are often brief flashes in the pan, Carcass showed tremendous staying power with lights-out live shows and now a monster of a record.
Nearly a decade later, the shine on Carcass has not faded. They are still considered one of extreme metal’s most significant acts. Rather than join the “release an album every year” fray, they have only put out one more since 2013 – Torn Arteries was a hit on year-end lists and charts in 2021. They continue touring and keeping their top-flight brand of melo-death afloat in an age where multiple generations of bands directly bearing Carcass influence have come and even gone. But a lot of the rub for modern day Carcass worship came from 2013 and Surgical Steel. They are an act who truly took over two different eras and reign as kings of the art form today.
This week’s pick is a watershed moment in extreme metal. The album is hailed as a cornerstone of its sound and it casts a massive influence on the direction of heavy metal for generations to come.
At The Gates – Slaughter Of The Soul
Released November 5, 1995 via Earache Records
My Favorite Tracks – Slaughter Of The Soul, Blinded By Fear, Under A Serpent Sun
By 1995, At The Gates were part of an emerging Swedish death metal scene also including In Flames and Dark Tranquillity. Their music would carry the term “Gothenburg Sound” in reference to their home city, but would widely come to be termed melodic death metal.
For At The Gates, fortunes had been rising after the release of their third album, 1994’s Terminal Spirit Disease. The stage was set for a release that would capture international attention and make the band top players in the death metal game. As it turns out, even that bar was too low to describe what happened.
The distinctions between melodic death metal and, uh, “normal” death metal lie in guitar and vocal delivery. Death metal was built on buzzsaw guitars and deep, guttural vocals; while melodic death employed riffs bearing influence from the traditional heavy metal of the 1980’s and a higher register of vocals, rendering the output more comprehensible.
Our album today comprises 11 tracks from the original version, with a very lean runtime of 33 minutes. I’ll handle that before tackling the legacy of the record, which could pretty well fill a book.
The album kicks off with Blinded By Fear, an intense thrasher reflecting on the concept of death being the only release from fear. The template for the record is set here, with fast riffs and vocals leading into a brief yet intense solo section. There isn’t a lot of deviation from this formula for the record’s course.
The title track arrives next. Slaughter Of The Soul has become the signature anthem for At The Gates, encapsulating perfectly the sound on display. The song both rolls smoothly and stomps over everything in its path. Cold comes next and features a guest guitar solo from Andy LaRocque of King Diamond and Death fame.
The assault continues with Under A Serpent Sun, tacking the tried and true metal theme of the end of the world. The album’s first half (roughly) is wrapped up with the instrumental Into The Dead World.
It is a nice, quiet break from the otherwise relentless proceedings.
Things pick straight back up with Suicide Nation. This song deftly straddles the line between thrash and death. World Of Lies emphasizes the low end a bit more, while Unto Others goes back to the higher register and also picks up the pace a fair bit. The album rounds out with Nausea and Need, two songs that lay on the throttle and bring the album home. Everything wraps up with another instrumental, The Flames Of The End, which would come to be a more fitting title than it would initially communicate.
Slaughter Of The Soul captured the attention of the metal underground and thrust At The Gates into the limelight. The band toured extensively behind the record, especially in the United States. The saturation of the market would lay the seeds for metal’s next big movements in the early 2000’s.
While the album would go on to be hailed as a genre-defining classic, much of At The Gates’ celebration of that legacy would not come until much later. In 1996, only a year after Slaughter… was released, ATG called it quits. The members would float through various projects until 2008, when they would reunite for a tour. It would be 19 years between albums as no new recorded music saw the light of day until 2014.
One could be forgiven for thinking that At The Gates did release albums in that time between – hundreds, in fact – the influence of Slaughter Of The Soul is stamped all over American heavy metal of the early millennium. Strains of melodic death metal would pop up all over the US and also abroad, and it wasn’t hard to hear the influence of At The Gates in the music. Both death metal and melodic metalcore would be top-selling fare during the 2000’s and lead the pack in terms of exposure and discussion.
Perhaps the true beauty of Slaughter Of The Soul is that its groundbreaking sound wasn’t really new or innovative, or even groundbreaking. At The Gates had already laid that foundation with three prior albums, along with their peers In Flames and Dark Tranquillity. Slaughter… is a beautifully executed record that is a high mark for melodic death metal but also doesn’t really do anything other than distill what already was into a finer form. There isn’t much in the way of innovation – rather, it’s just the sound turned up to 11.
Today Slaughter Of The Soul remains as a staple of the heavy metal diet, in fact At The Gates have been playing the entire record live in recent shows. The album’s legacy is secure and has honestly only grown as the music it inspired became the law of the land in heavy metal.
The Crooked Wanderer 