“Chances are your favourite musicians owe this band a debt of gratitude”: Your essential guide to every At The Gates album

At The Gates may not have been the biggest band of their generation, but if you’re a millennial or Gen Z metalhead, chances are your favourite musicians owe the Swedish death metal trailblazers a debt of gratitude. From as early as 1992 debut album The Red In The Sky Is Ours, the Gothenburg five-piece were out to reshape their genre, and their vision finally caught on with 1995’s Slaughter Of The Soul: a svelte shot of adrenaline that inspired the likes of Trivium, Lamb Of God and many other future superstars.

The band who shaped the 21st-century metal sound sadly didn’t get to revel in their success, as they went on hiatus from 1996 to 2007. However, they went on to enjoy a well-earned victory lap with their reunion tour and three post-comeback albums. Following the tragic death of frontman and co-founder Tomas Lindberg aged 52, this is the essential guide to their oeuvre – without which, the current face of metal would be very different and, probably, much worse.

The Red In The Sky Is Ours (1992)

Though At The Gates would change the face of metal by making some of its most accessible yet blistering songs, their early M.O. was essentially the opposite. On The Red In The Sky Is Ours and 1993 follow-up With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness, ex-guitarist Alf Svensson was a primary songwriter, and the band have since admitted that his ideas were too overblown for their own good. Their debut album was sprawling, dense and indifferent to song structure, with violin sections and proggy breaks that were ambitious, absolutely, but didn’t amount to more than the sum of their parts. It’s an anomaly well worth checking out, albeit far from At The Gates’ finest hour.

With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness (1993)

On their last album with Alf Svensson, At The Gates started to trim the fat, with such simpler songs as Raped By The Light Of Christ and The Burning Darkness hinting towards the immediacy they’d one day specialise in. There were still meandering monoliths to be found, including the lengthier Primal Breath, but this was a step in the right direction, as well as the last album to not be made by the band’s classic lineup. Within a year of its release, Svensson stepped down to focus on his full-time job as a tattoo artist, and guitarist Martin Larsson, fresh from the more thrash-indebted band The House Of Usher, was subbed in.

Terminal Spirit Disease (1994)

Intended to be an EP introducing the ‘new’ At The Gates, Terminal Spirit Disease was inflated to album-length thanks to record label tampering. With the band’s co-founding Björler brothers (guitarist Anders and bassist Jonas) fully in charge of the songwriting, this was a no-nonsense reinvention that signalled great things to come. The Swarm transitioned from ominous violin to cathartic thrash/death riffing, before the title track made itself a thrilling showcase for Lindberg’s introspective lyrics, far flung from any semblance of death metal cliche. “Let your joy be reality! Our suffering life, the dream!” he howled, making a surprisingly motivational and profound statement for this genre at this time.

Slaughter Of The Soul (1995)

After Terminal Spirit Disease, At The Gates embarked on a UK tour so disastrous that they spent much of it stranded in a Norwich car park. They returned home pissed off and penniless, but immediately re-entered the studio with producer Fredrik Nordström. The band’s rage mixed with the anthemic approach they were already pursuing to make Slaughter Of The Soul a passionate, incensed and palatable masterpiece. The album inspired a host of wannabes, many of which grouped together to form the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal, but the band didn’t get to revel in their success. In 1996, burnt out by touring and newfound pressure, Anders Björler left and the band imploded – and they wouldn’t return for 11 years.

At War With Reality (2014)

By 2007, there was a whole generation of At The Gates fans who’d never seen the band live. So, they decided to come back. What was supposed to be a one-off tour quickly expanded once they re-discovered their love for playing together, and in 2014 they put out their first album in 19 years. At War With Reality had all the force and existentialism of Slaughter…, but was also more dynamic. There were more acoustic guitars and changes of pace, with finale The Night Eternal feeling borderline neoclassical as it wrapped up with dovetailing lead guitars. Anticipated for nearly two decades yet disappointing to no one, this was a return that nodded towards past glories without repeating them.

To Drink From The Night Itself (2018)

In 2016, Anders Björler stepped down from At The Gates once again, but this time the band decided to continue. They brought in Jonas Stålhammar (whom they parted ways with in 2022, after he was accused of inappropriate online behaviour, only to bring Anders back) and proceeded with To Drink From The Night Itself. A concept piece about Peter Weiss’ antifascist novel The Aesthetics Of Resistance, it was the first At The Gates album to not feel like at least something of a leap away from its predecessor. However, it still packed some powerhouse moments. The high-octane title track and blackened groove fest A Stare Bound In Stone were career-higher achievements, proving the band’s top-notch 2014 comeback was by no means a fluke.

The Nightmare Of Being (2021)

The final At The Gates album released during Lindberg’s lifetime was something of a full-circle moment. While writing, the band reintegrated their proggier influences: something they hadn’t truly touched upon since the early 90s. The Nightmare Of Being was the most expansive of their post-reunion work, featuring the seven-minute orchestral suite The Fall Into Time, yet that broadened scope didn’t come at the expense of any focus. Spectre Of Extinction was an absolute blitzkrieg, and Cult Of Salvation’s krautrock detours did nothing to dent its choruses. Lindberg recorded vocals for a follow-up before he died, but if this ends up being his final At The Gates outing, he bowed out with one of his finest efforts.