At the Gates - The Red in the Sky Is Ours (1992) Reviews

This is a tough album for me to review. I love Slaughter of the Soul and admit to approaching the band's earlier albums long after they were released. The Red in the Sky is Ours doesn't sound very much like the aforementioned classic, having a lot more tremolo riffing and a far rawer production. At first, I must admit to being extremely disappointed. Tomas' vocals are a lot weaker than on later releases and, as someone mentioned below, he comes across as a poor man's Varg Vikernes (from Burzum), but in the completely wrong environment.

The songs are a bit all over the place too, coming across as a bunch of riffs randomly thrown together instead of the immensely tight, structured outfit that they would become down the track. While there are numerous enjoyable riffs, I find it difficult to enjoy whole tracks, let alone recall them later. Finally, the playing is a bit sloppy at times, which when combined with the raw production, generally doesn't make for an ideal death metal basis.

This said, after a few forced listens I’ve found quite a few diamonds in this rough. Within and Neverwhere are really quite good and many other tracks have some enjoyable moments. But it's not enough for me to understand why so many consider this to be a classic death metal album, nor how anyone could call it At the Gates' best release. It's a decent debut that displayed potential, but just doesn't come together to form a great whole in my opinion.

Although most of the world were first exposed to Swedish melodic death metal legends At The Gates through their undisputedly classic 1995 fourth album "Slaughter of the Soul", it would be their 1992 debut full-length "The Red in the Sky is Ours" that would first bring them to my attention back in the early-to-mid 1990's & I recall really enjoying the experience too with the record receiving a number of repeat visits. This was a very different At The Gates to the one that would explode across the globe a few years later but I had none of that future context at the time which I think helped me to understand the record more than someone that would try to go back to it after having been converted by the wonderful "Slaughter of the Soul" which I still regard as the pinnacle of the melodeath sound to this day. I also have some unusual opinions on "The Red in the Sky is Ours" that I think hold some merit & need to be heard so let's take a look at it in a little more detail.

At The Gates' debut album is a fairly raw death metal album that possesses a lot of street credibility for a number of reasons but the production job is actually pretty clean which makes the fairly complex compositions easily decipherable. The rawness comes more from the vocals & performances which keep "The Red in the Sky is Ours" firmly in the underground. Most pundits will have you believe that At The Gates' debut was simply a classic old-school death metal album but I have to disagree with that claim as there's much more to it than that. The arrangements are so erratic yet also so sophisticated that I'm constantly left feeling like I'm listening to a technical death metal release & there's a very clear reason for that. "The Red in the Sky is Ours" is very obviously an attempt to emulate Atheist's classic "Unquestionable Presence" sophomore album in my opinion with a lot of the tools being utilized having been clearly borrowed from the Florida tech death legends. Take the basslines of Jonas Björler (The Haunted) for example which often attempt to pull off similar flourishes of technicality with the guitarists opting for similar layers of melodic counterplay too, occasionally hinting at the melodic death metal sound that they'd play a huge role in developing over the coming years although never consistently enough to justify the claims that "The Red in the Sky is Ours" is a legitimate Swedish melodeath release. The one element that At The Gates can't manage to replicate is the musicianship though which sees them offering a much looser outcome. Don't get me wrong, these guys can certainly play but pulling it all together tightly in the studio is another thing altogether. Strangely though, this seems to work for At The Gates here as it gives the album an additional layer of authenticity, the sort that the underground tape trading scene was built on & one that I very much understand. The vocals of Tomas Lindberg (Lock Up/Disfear/The Lurking Fear/Grotesque/Liers in Wait/The Crown) are also extremely raw & don't sound anywhere near as polished as they would soon become which only adds to this underground atmosphere. There's an unhinged madness to his rabid delivery which isn't as accessible as we'd hear from him on later efforts & leaves him as the weaker link in the early At The Gates chain in my opinion.

"The Red in the Sky is Ours" is a very consistent record as I don't think there are any weak tracks included as such. There aren't any absolute belters either but there are just enough very solid death metal numbers to see me thoroughly enjoying the outcome nonetheless. The one-two punch of my personal favourite "Within" into the equally strong "Windows" is probably the best part of the record although I also really enjoy the title track, "Neverwhere" & the end of the album which is made up of the highly progressive "Night Comes, Blood Black" & "City of Screaming Statues", a track that was also included on At The Gates' excellent 1991 "Gardens of Grief" demo which fans of the band should really check out.

But where does "The Red in the Sky is Ours" sit in the overall At The Gates back catalogue then? Well, I'm not gonna surprise anyone by suggesting that it eclipses "Slaughter of the Soul" as that's simply not the case but I don't actually think it's all that far behind it terms of how much appeal it offers me. I've never been the biggest fan of melodic death metal so the more technical death metal approach of the debut is more in line with my usual musical preferences which, I'll admit, gives it a little bit of an advantage over At The Gates' other records & perhaps that's the reason that I've always considered it to be their second-best release. For those that have always had similar battles with the melodeath subgenre to myself, don't let that discourage you from giving "The Red in the Sky is Ours" a few runs because it holds some very different cards & I tend to associate much more closely with bands like the afore-mentioned Atheist, fellow Swedes Liers in Wait & the more technical melodeath artists like Arsis than I do a Dark Tranquillity or In Flames. Whatever you call it though, it deserves to be heard & shouldn't be left lurking in the shadows while "Slaughter of the Soul" takes all of the spotlight.