This album was one of the most influencial to the Swedish metal scene. It really has everything you could want from a metal album, although it's a little bit short. Fast, technical guitaring with emotion-fuelled screaming vocals. The songs have an element of organised chaos to them, but the band loses points for overall complexity of songwriting. Still this is a great album for any metalhead, and a must-have for any fans of the Swedish Gothenburg sound.

This review is credited to:
Julian Forbes

Best songs: "Blinded By Fear", "Slaughter of the Soul", "Unto Others"
Worst songs: none

The single feature that has prompted many to name Slayer's Reign In Blood the best metal album ever was its sheer intensity. Despite the efforts of every extreme metal band worth their salt to supercede it, nobody, themselves included, could. Nearly ten years later, At The Gates has become the first to raise a real challenge. While their previous works featured violins/cellos and more conventionally (and rather unimpressive) Gothenburg structure, Slaughter of the Soul seamlessly integrates a new element: thrash. The supreme Adrian Erlandsson punches sonic craters into his drums with surgical precision, elevating the blast beat to an mechanical art form and interspersing rolling, surging fields of double bass. His performance is not only integral to the new axiom of unrestrained energy (think Dark Angel), it is the most definitive. The rhythm guitar has become an instrument of this same destructive foundation, its suffocatingly heavy low B power chords distinctly percussive. This represents another departure from their primary competition: it bifurcates the interaction of the two guitars. No other band before them would send them into reckless, high-speed elastic collisions with each other, only to have them adhere and spiral off in tandem. Anders Bjorler is not a technical guitarist, but his leads are strangely unique in their rapidly alternate-picked clusters of melodic notes. Furthermore, his harmonies are oblique (not parallel) and unusually chromatic for twin-guitar bands (again bringing Slayer to mind). Above these perplexing inversions of normality, Tompa spews forth tormented, acidic screams, surprisingly effective at communicating both rage and pain with a sort of retributive violence. His themes are modern and dystopian, a nihilistic view of human nature ("World of Lies", "Suicide Nation") and religion ("Under A Serpent Sun") often given a personal context ("Cold"). The sheer carnage is placated, briefly, by "Into The Dead Sky" (the eye of the hurricane), and the placid (drugged, everything implies) finale, "The Flames of the End". The second disc is a bonus from Earache, a limited split with Napalm Death entitled Cursed To Tour. This is misleading - they aren't live cuts - but worthwhile due to the two unreleased At The Gates songs, notably "Legion", which exemplifies the frenzied staccato guitar percussion. The perfect production from Fredrik Nordström preserves everything admirably, and it's no wonder At The Gates broke up following the tour in 1996, having built themselves an almost unsurpassable legacy with this album's trenchant conviction and urgency.

Tomas Lindberg - vocals
Anders Bjorler - lead guitar
Martin Larsson - rhythm guitar
Jonas Bjorler - bass
Adrian Erlandsson - drums

Tracklist:

DISC 1 ---- -

1. Blinded By Fear 3:12
2. Slaughter of the Soul 3:01
3. Cold 3:27
4. Under A Serpent Sun 3:58
5. Into The Dead Sky 2:11
6. Suicide Nation 3:35
7. World of Lies 3:34
8. Unto Others 3:10
9. Nausea 2:22
10. Need 2:36
11. The Flames of the End 2:57

Total: 34:16

DISC 2 ---- -

1. Cursed To Crawl 3:24 (performed by Napalm Death)
2. Take The Strain 4:09 (performed by Napalm Death)
3. Food Chain 3:14 (performed by Napalm Death)
4. Politics of Common Sense 2:57 (performed by Napalm Death)
5. Slaughter of the Soul 3:01
6. World of Lies 3:34
7. Legion 3:52
8. The Dying 3:17

Total: 27:40

This review is credited to:
Sadekuuro