Review by Sonny for At the Gates - Slaughter of the Soul (1995)

At the risk of becoming increasingly repetitive, At the Gates are yet another band I have encountered on my journey through death metal's beginnings, about whom I know very little, despite previously having seen their name all over the place. This time, though, after actually listening to them, I am not filled with the feeling that I have been missing out. It's not that this is terrible or anything like that, in fact it is extremely tight and aggressive. It's just that, to my untrained ears, it sounds like an awful lot of the metalcore that I have encountered whenever I have ventured into Revolution territory and as such it doesn't really float my boat that  much. From what I gather, this was enormously influential and a pivotal release in the development of melodeath and the "Gothenburg Sound", neither of which I am much of a fan of, so it was always going to be a bit of a reach for me.

On the plus side, the riffs come thick and fast and, at times, are fairly memorable, even though the guitar sound is of the Entombed / Dismember, heavily distorted Swedish style of which I am not the world's biggest fan. The rhythm section of bassist Jonas Björler and drummer Adrian Erlandsson work really well together and sound like a very tight unit, providing a lot of muscle to back up the frantic riffing. I don't really go for the hardcore-derived vocal style of singer Tomas Lindberg, I much prefer my death metal with the gutteral growls of Reifert, Vincent and Chuck to this "shouty" style which very often rubs me up the wrong way wherever I encounter it and is probably the most offputting aspect of the album for me.

I can definitely hear how influential this album has been upon not only no end of melodeath wannabees, but also on the development of metalcore, the earliest practitioners of which must have been well acquainted with this. I would have to say that this is a very good example of a style of metal that I am not the biggest fan of and, a bit like my attitude towards Trivium's In Waves, it is an album I would probably only return to when I was in a mood for something different from my usual fare, acknowleding it as important in the development of metal and being enjoyable enough in it's own right, without it really resonating with me on a personal level.