Swedish melodic death metal pioneers AT THE GATES have released the official music video for the title track of their new album, “The Nightmare Of Being”. The clip, which can be seen below, was directed by Patric Ullaeus of rEvolver Film Company (ARCH ENEMY, IN FLAMES, DIMMU BORGIR).
AT THE GATES vocalist Tomas Lindberg commented: “One of the key tracks on the album, this one is really dark and haunting, with some classic old-school AT THE GATES harmonies thrown in.
“I guess some of you have already read up on the concept of the album. This one is the introduction to said concept, introducing the main idea that mankind’s consciousness is the ghost of our nightmares, the plague that drives us to our own extinction.
“I am really happy that Patric Ullaeus got the chance to, once again, interpret the dark themes of our music with his video. He really gave this a special feeling, which I think goes really well with the theme of the abyss of the human soul.
“Today you can also, finally, listen to the whole album! Dive in! It is, as said before, the most rich, cinematic, textured, layered, progressive and dynamic album we have ever written. Thanks for listening!”
While main parts for “The Nightmare Of Being” were recorded in several different Swedish studios — drums at Studio Gröndal with Jens Bogren, guitars and bass with Andy La Rocque at Sonic Train Studio and vocals at Welfare Sounds with Per Stålberg — the LP was mixed and mastered at Fascination Street Studios (AMON AMARTH, OPETH, KREATOR) by Jens Bogren, who has previously worked with AT THE GATES on the “At War With Reality” comeback album in 2014. The album’s visual concept was developed by artist Eva Nahon.
Lindberg previously stated about the album’s concept: “The overall theme deals with the topic of pessimism, and I have been diving deep down in pessimistic philosophers. Trying to understand this way of looking at the world. It is not a negative album, more a gateway into new ideas for me personally, trying out different perspectives. You could call the album an introduction to pessimism as a concept, I guess. It is a very dark album, but not negative…”
Tomas spoke about “The Nightmare Of Being” musical direction in an interview with MessedUp Magazine. He said: “We were very excited about [2014’s] ‘At War With Reality’ already before it was released, because it represented our comeback. No one was as excited about it as us, but some time later, I thought it was too slick, too well-produced. ‘To Drink From the Night Itself’ was a response to that and we wanted it to be dirty and gritty and have loads of classic death metal sounds on it, like a lot of reverb on the vocals and that stuff. It was a record for old-school fans. The upcoming album is somewhere in between, something that continues on the concept we started on the two previous albums where we incorporated much more of our proggy, krauty and avant-gardist influences. Just to give you the picture of how it sounds; one song goes by the nickname ‘the Goblin song,’ another we call ‘the Neu song.’ But I promise you we don’t take it too far — people wouldn’t listen to it if we did. [Laughs] When we were in the studio, we told Jens Bogren [producer] to keep the gritty sound and the attack from the last record and put the overall sound in between the comeback records. And it sounds awesome.
“When we did the Roadburn festival two years ago we did a special set with guest vocalists and string instruments and that stuff on stage and played songs we never played live before. All that was very inspiring because we realized we can do it today, the things we thought we could do as teenagers when we wanted to be the KING CRIMSON of death metal [laughs], but we weren’t good enough. After the Roadburn gig, we talked about incorporating more of those elements on record.
“Let’s say we’re super excited about how people will receive the record because there’s stuff on the album never heard on an AT THE GATES record before — a lot of weird things. [Laughs] For old fans, there’s at least five or six classic AT THE GATES songs on it, but it’s a quite diverse album.
“AT THE GATES have been around for such a long time by now that we don’t need to release records to please someone else — we want to do things we like ourselves. It’s still death metal, but it has evolved. We just want it to sell enough to get money to record the next album. [Laughs] “
2018’s “To Drink From The Night Itself” was the first AT THE GATES album written and recorded without lead guitarist/primary songwriter Anders Björler, who departed in 2017. He has since been replaced by Jonas Stålhammar.
AT THE GATES is:
Adrian Erlandsson – Drums
Jonas Björler – Bass
Tomas Lindberg – Vocals
Jonas Stålhammar – Guitar
Martin Larsson – Guitar
Photo by Ester Segarra
