Slaughter Of The Soul - At the Gates

Released back in 1995, At The Gates' swan-song album 'Slaughter of the Soul' sees a progression from the lo-fi and organic sounding mix of death and black metal evident in their earlier efforts to a much more stripped-down sound that mixes thrash, death metal and crust-punk to create a catchy yet relentlessly fast and heavy piece of seminal Gothenburg metal. It is undeniably a more accessable and therefore more commercial effort, but its one that works brilliantly, with endless waves of satisfyingly crunchy, thrashy riffs and excellent despondent melodic solos backed up by simplistic hammering drum-beats. 'Slaughter..' is an album on which everything just ...  Read the complete review

Here we have one of the popularly cited classics of melodic death metal, the evident inspiration for the legions of overly aggressive, obtrusive, paradoxical metalcore bands dominating the metal mainstream these days. For that reason alone it perhaps deserves to be hammered to bits (violence begets violence), but that would be like travelling back to the genesis of the Daleks and pushing the conveniently marked self-destruct button to stop the universe's greatest threat from ever coming into existence. Besides, taken on its own merits as At the Gates' amicable swan song before the band members' dissolution to other parts of the Swedish metal scene, 'Slaughter of the ...  Read the complete review