ALBUM REVIEW: At The Gates, ‘To Drink From The Night Itself’

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type:Full Length

Date Released:18/05/2018

Label:Century Media Records

 The omnipresent malevolence that coats the majority of the album gives it a different feel from the rest of the band’s catalog. At The Gates do their best to get the best of both worlds: acting as an agent of fan service and staying in their own lane, while also using broad strokes to give the old sound a new context. 

‘To Drink From the Night Itself’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Der Widerstand

2. To Drink from the Night Itself

3. A Stare Bound in Stone

4. Palace of Lepers

5. Daggers of Black Haze

6. The Chasm

7. In Nameless Sleep

8. The Colours of the Beast

9. A Labyrinth of Tombs

10. Seas of Starvation

11. In Death They Shall Burn

12. The Mirror Black

The Review:

At The Gates, being in the At The Gates nostalgia business, have returned to be really good at being a version of At The Gatesthat you’d like to hear, as a fan of At The Gates. I know how that read just now, and I don’t care: it’s fucking accurate. They’re a band intent on crafting the best nostalgia album they can, and they’ve done a exceptional job of meeting those goals here. They’ve taken the moody atmosphere of ‘With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness’, gussied it up with a modern studio production, a touch of added darkness, and plugged it into the “Slaughter of The Soul 5000”, their patented nostalgia refinement machine.

The end result is ‘To Drink From The Night Itself’: the album morose death metal folks of a certain age are sure to enjoy enough to spend money on. And bless them for it too! The last thing we need is Jonas Björler getting some wild “got to keep up with the times” hair up his ass, like his other band The Haunted did, and you might remember how long it took them to right that ship once they set sail upon that sea.

The formula for this album is pretty straightforward: you’ve got your slower, melodic parts that range from mournful twin harmonies to murky atmospheric darkness. And then you’ve got your uptempo Slayer beat stuff, which I affectionately referred to as the “Slaughter of the Soul 5000” machine earlier. That’s the stuff meant to get your “Blinded By Fear” glands salivating, like Pavlov’s dog whenever Pavlov entered the room. It’s all very comfortable, like a warm sweater and a cup of hot cocoa at the start of winter.

Here’s the fucked up thing: At The Gates nostalgia baiting us for forty-five minutes still makes for one of the finer death metal albums of the year, and they sound like they’re barely trying. The band are an inexorable monolith of “remember the good old days” emotions here, and all we can do is continue to be fascinated and entranced by it. We’re powerless to resist the charm of familiarity, and really why would we want to? There’s no harm in it.

While that “warm sweater of fond melodeath remembrance” I mentioned earlier is certainly a huge part of why ‘To Drink From The Night Itself’ works so well, it would be unfair to say that the album doesn’t have its own character. They’re especially fond of using those deep, resonant chords for building atmosphere on this album, which gives the album a more menacing feeling altogether. In fact, you could call this At The Gates’ darkest album to date, and have a solid case for that belief. ‘With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness’ was more gloomy than outright ominous, and this album is firmly planted on that second word’s side of things.

For all of my needling the album for playing it safe, ‘To Drink From The Night Itself’ is a big improvement over ‘At War With Reality’. The parts of the album meant to give you a cozy trip down memory lane do so remarkably. The omnipresent malevolence that coats the majority of the album gives it a different feel from the rest of the band’s catalog. At The Gates do their best to get the best of both worlds: acting as an agent of fan service and staying in their own lane, while also using broad strokes to give the old sound a new context. This album is the musical equivalent of reuniting with old friends at your favorite old hangout spot and having a great time, even if the place doesn’t look quite like it did before. An occasion like that is virtually guaranteed to be a joy for you because it was the safest choice to bring you that joy in the first place. Does that really diminish the experience any for you? It didn’t for me.

‘To Drink From the Night Itself’is available digitally here and on CD/LP here.

Band info: Facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Witchery - “In His Infernal Majesty's Service”

By: Richard Maw

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 25/11/2016

Label: Century Media Records

The riffage is superb throughout, as is the production- being as it is raw and noisy and thus perfect for this type of music. “The Burning of Salem” is as fast as it is dark, while “Gilded Fang” is a short storm of riffs and blasts. Frankly, it is hard to pick stand-outs here. The album is uniformly good. Unsung heroes of Swedish metal to a large extent, I urge you to check this album out and then work back through “Witchkrieg” and beyond.

“In His Infernal Majesty's Service” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Lavey-athon

2). Zoroast

3). Netherworld Empire

4). Nosferatu

5). The Burning of Salem

6). Gilded Fang

7). Empty Tombs

8). In Warm Blood

9). Escape from Dunwich Valley

10). Feed The Gun

The Review:

Witchery, now nearly twenty years into their existence, return here some six years after the nasty and excellent “Witchkrieg”. The album finds the band still ploughing the blackened thrash furrow- and their efforts still yield an impressive crop of riffs and songs.

The punningly titled “Lavey-athan” kicks things off in thrashing style, while “Zoroast”takes a more rock n roll type approach- with effective results. Elsewhere, the thrash is firmly back; “Netherworld Empire” is the type of rampaging beast that The Haunted used to make before they lost their way. “Nosferatu” continues the underworld themes with a rather classic alt-Slayerpacing and flavour and a catchy (yes) chorus. Storming stuff, so it is.

The riffage is superb throughout, as is the production- being as it is raw and noisy and thus perfect for this type of music. “The Burning of Salem” is as fast as it is dark, while “Gilded Fang” is a short storm of riffs and blasts. Frankly, it is hard to pick stand-outs here. The album is uniformly good. Nothing lets the side down, nothing stands out for the wrong reasons. “Empty Tombs” is a concise thrasher, “In Warm Blood” is a mid-paced rocker... there are no holes to pick here. There is even a Lovecraft inspired track in “Escape From Dunwich Valley” (which is awesome, incidentally).

By the time of the two closing tracks of identical length, “Feed The Gun” and “Oath Breaker”, you will have been well and truly thrashed. Line up changes have not dulled this band's potency one iota. The macabre humour remains, the song writing is as sharp as ever. Witchery are most certainly back and have made yet another great record. Unsung heroes of Swedish metal to a large extent, I urge you to check this album out and then work back through “Witchkrieg” and beyond.

“In His Infernal Majesty's Service” is available now

Band info: facebook