To Drink From The Night Itself Double CD
To Drink From The Night Itself CD
2 Disc Jewel Case
AT THE GATES are innovators. From debut album, The Red In The Sky Is Ours, through comeback stunner, At War With Reality, the Gothenburg-based death metal act have always traversed the left-hand path on their own terms. The Swedes are keenly aware of who they are, where they come from, and how they got to where they are today. In the ‘90s, AT THE GATES spearheaded The New Wave of Swedish Death Metal. In the aughts, then-swansong album, Slaughter Of The Soul, served as a feature-rich treasure chest for a host of upstarts to plunder. When AT THE GATES returned in 2008—a full 12 years after they disbanded—their return was celebrated and the follow-up to Slaughter Of The Soul—now placing handsomely on Top Metal Album Lists—hotly anticipated. Now, four years after At War with Reality, the Swedes are ready to show their indomitable spirit, ceaseless ingenuity, and raw power on new album, To Drink From The Night Itself.
Whereas At War With Reality was, to some degree, the logical follow-up to Slaughter Of The Soul, AT THE GATES post-return aren’t tied down to the formula that produced such incredible tracks like ‘Death And The Labyrinth,’ ‘The Book Of Sand (The Abomination),’ ‘Heroes And Tombs,’ and ‘The Night Eternal.’ The proverbial prison in which AT THE GATES were subconsciously housed (as part of their comeback) had crumbled. For To Drink From The Night Itself, the Swedes were finally free of creative limitations, follow-up expectations, and invisible but all-too-real self-imposed restrictions. The Rubicon, as it were, was ready to be crossed and nothing—not even long-standing guitarist Anders Björler, who departed in March 2017—was going to hold AT THE GATES back.
Conceptually, To Drink From The Night Itself originated with German writer Peter Weiss and his novel, The Aesthetics Of Resistance. The idea was to capture the desperation of a struggle or resistance, where victory is unachievable yet the fight presses on. Lindberg also was enlivened by Weiss’ discussion of art—all forms—via his characters and its various uses, either as a weapon of oppression or as a signal of opposition. As witnessed throughout history, art has been and will be labeled unfairly decadent or ridiculously triumphant or secretly obstructionist.
To Drink From The Night Itself was recorded at three studios. The vocals were captured by Per Stålberg and Olle Björk at Welfare Studios in Gothenburg over a three-week period, while the rest of the music—drums, bass, and guitar—were recorded by producer Russ Russell at Parlour Recording Studios in the UK over a two-week session. The strings—cello, violin, and double bass—were then tracked by Martin Jacobson at Rovljud Studios in Örebro. The entire effort was produced by Jonas [Björler], Lindberg, and Russell over three weeks, with Russell taking an additional two weeks to mix and master.
“We want to be creative in the death metal genre. The limits are what keep us alive. We wanted to push those limits on To Drink from The Night Itself. This is a big album, we had to pursue it.” - Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg
Album Release Date Is May 18th 2018
