Cover Art: At The Gates is one of the early pioneers of the Swedish Gothenburg melodic death metal sound in the early 90’s which pretty much helped spawn an entire sub genre of death metal. I was actually surprised when I saw this album up for DL, I had long known that the band had disbanded years ago; their last album was released in 1995; so there must have been something going on with the ex-members to reform and release this basically 20 years later. Outside of this little history lesson, this album cover is pretty shit, actually pretty horrible. Like it’s just plain bad and boring. So we got some hands, doing some shit in some magical occult looking formation with reliefs of two human figures in each. Wow, you guys need to get a better artist and better ideas. Logo? Just some mild serif font, might as well be Times New Roman.
Album Review: Being one of the pioneers means little I guess, especially after 20 years. I’m pretty disappointed with this album as I was expecting some new epic revival and innovative sound but what I got was rehashed riffs and melodies that just sounded…dated and done before. While I shouldn’t shit on a band for doing what they do best but if you guys were going to reform, at least have something new to offer to the genre, otherwise you might as well not have gotten back together to begin with. All of the songs have decent melodies but none are that memorable and totally outclassed in terms of innovation and technical composition from newer bands. Vocals are standard death growls and done well enough but no other variation. If your looking for something that was fresh and new back in 1995, then this is perfect shit for you, but for me I’ve heard so much better that I can not help but forget about this album.
Score: 5/10