Out of all of the extreme metal scenes that have occurred across the world, such as the NWOBHM, Florida death metal, NWOAHM, and Norwegian black metal, the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene is one of my favorite. At The Gates, In Flames (pre-2000's), and Dark Tranquility all release some excellent albums in the 90's that certainly would classify as some of my favorite music ever put into existence. It's great to see that Dark Tranquility and At The Gates are still making music in the vein of what they were releasing back then, and modern material from both bands has been stellar. At War With Reality, from At the Gates, was one of my favorite albums of 2014, and Atoma, from Dark Tranquility, was in my top 10 for 2016. At the Gates are perhaps one of my largest musical influences when writing music and are certainly one of my favorite groups in general.
My first encounter with At the Gates was one of total awe, soon after they released At War With Reality in 2014. I couldn't comprehend Tomas Lindberg's voice, as I had never really heard anything like it. I was intrigued and went out and bought the album soon after, with it now being one of my favorite metal releases of this decade. Despite the criticism of it being Slaughter of the Soul part two, I certainly believe it holds on its own and has a great rage of qualities that lead this criticism to be false. With To Drink From The Night Itself, however, I was initially very skeptical due to the departure of Anders Bjorler. After listening to the album multiple times, I'm pleasantly surprised with the musical direction and cohesiveness of the album, albeit being slightly disappointed with relatively standard feel of some of the tracks.
The album starts out with a pretty standard instrumental intro track, then is quickly followed by the first song released from the album, the title track. "To Drink From The Night Itself" really excited me at first, but the more I listened to it, the less excited about this album I was. It just sounded to me as if it were a just a rehashing of "Blinded by Fear" from Slaughter of the Soul, which was certainly a problem. When the album dropped however, I came to appreciate this song, as it does exactly for this album what "Blinded by Fear" did for Slaughter of the Soul, except slightly less effectively, that being a powerful musical introduction to the content of the rest of the album (Disclaimer: Slaughter of the Soul is one of my favorite albums ever written, so any comparison carries a heavy weight in discussion). The lead guitars on this track, performed by new guitarist Joan Stahlhammer, certainly are a highlight. Jonas is a spectacular guitarist in his own respect, performing with another band with many members of At the Gates, The Lurking Fear, and with Bombs of Hades and God Macabre. The man has an undeniable track record and is a perfect fit for At the Gates. That being said, there is really nothing unique about this track and I am curious as to why they chose to use it as the lead single.
The next song is "A Stare Bound in Stone", where the album's brooding, thick sound really starts to take shape. On my first few listens I didn't really "get" this song, meaning I didn't see any real value to it, but I have come to appreciate it much more, especially the latter half of the song, which contains what I guess would be considered a bridge, even though it dominates this entire half of the song. Interesting guitar play occurs between Jonas and Martin Larsson, with some chilling choir vocals occurring behind this section, which builds and grows as the song comes to a close.
"A Palace of Lepers" is a great song, but is unfortunately formulaic and rather bland in terms of song structure in the first half. The guitar work is really spectacular, as well as the atmosphere, in the second half of the song, just as in the previous track "A Stare Bound in Stone". This is certainly a result of the formula of most recent At the Gates tracks, which is an unfortunate downside some of their post-reunion material. Every member of the band really shines in most of these songs, but the predictable song structure really weighs the band down.
"Daggers of Black Haze" fortunately rips this structure into shreds. This song is perhaps the most beautiful song on the album, featuring a proper guitar solo (the first from Jonas in this group), strings, and a real representation of the atmosphere that At the Gates were shooting for on this album. I enjoy the underlying lead guitars present in the track, as well as overall complete feeling that the track has. Compositionally, this song is excellent, featuring some of the best bass playing on the album as well, notable past the one-minute and thirty second mark. I don't know who was doing the sort of growled gang vocals present in this song, but that is something I have never heard from At the Gates before, and also something I would like to hear more of. The aforementioned guitar solo is underwhelming, yet, at least shows what Jonas is capable of, and has me excited for future albums with Jonas. Reportedly, he came in late to the writing process and unfortunately did not get to contribute much to the writing of the album.
"The Chasm", instrumentally, sounds like a typical At the Gates song, but the guitar solo and conversational growled vocals featured in the last minute of the song make it one of my favorites on the album. This guitar solo is worlds better and more unique than the one featured on "Daggers of Black Haze", and really sets Jonas apart from his predecessor. I say this not meaning that he is a better guitarist than Anders, this solo just certainly doesn't sound like anything Anders would have written. The growled vocals are also unique, much different than the normal style that Tomas uses. These vocals are much less raspy and monotonous, and instead are much more close to Mikael Akerfeldt's growls during his time with Bloodbath. They are certainly more closely aligned with a traditional death growl than Tomas's growl, which would be considered more of a mid than a low, in extreme metal vocal lingo. This makes me question as to if Tomas is even the one doing these vocals, which are similar to those on the last track, or if another band member is doing them. Either way, keep it up At the Gates.
"In Nameless Sleep" is a pretty great track, but I can't help but feel it would have worked better on At War With Reality than on this album. Then again, a great deal of this song is just one large guitar solo... so... I have to love it. I can't help but be more excited about what Jonas has to write on the next album. I greatly appreciate the musical direction this album is going in, but can't help but feel that the vision isn't completely executed on this album. The atmosphere is reminiscent of their older work, which was much more traditional death metal than their newer work. I mean that statement not that in terms of production or anything of that sort, just that overall composition is more like The Red In The Sky Is Ours than anything they have released since. It's much less melodic and instead much more jagged.
"The Colours of The Beast" is certainly the darkest and probably most traditionally heavy song on the album. It's much less fast, much more heavy hitting, and much more brooding. I didn't think I would ever hear a song this slow from At the Gates, but this is absolutely a standout track on this album, a great implication of where the band is headed. There still exists some classic At the Gates moments, such as the signature tremolo picking guitar work around the chorus, yet I wouldn't even classify this song as melodic death metal, and if I couldn't recognize that it was At the Gates, I wouldn't even expect that the band was a part of the Gothenburg scene (maybe only influenced by it). Given the criticism of repetition that At War With Reality received, this is great news.
The verses of "A Labyrinth of Tombs" are unfortunately very formulaic, yet the instrumentation in the chorus is infectious. This song also utilizes the same sort of growled gang vocals used in "Daggers of Black Haze". I like this song (I haven't ever heard an At the Gates song I haven't liked), yet I think it may be one of the least unique songs on the album, along with the title track and the following song, "The Seas of Starvation", which really feels like moody At the Gates by-the-numbers.
"In Death They Shall Burn" is a great song as well, but again, is rather weak excluding the last minute or so of the track. Standard, and rather formulaic, I can't help but be disappointed with these last few songs before the outro track.
"The Mirror Black" combines the traditional song and the instrumental outro into one track excellently. It starts out with an instrumental section reminiscent of something off of The Jester Race from in flames, but transitions into strings and a choir. This track is incredibly beautiful, and I wish they had done more like this on the rest of the album, although I'm sure At the Gates has no desire to become a symphonic death metal band. The latter half reminds me of some of the most beautiful classical music I have ever listened to (I'm sure my labeling of this section as classical is incorrect, but I'm also sure that you, the reader, will understand this mistake).
The production on this album is much warmer, less mechanical, and less crisp than its predecessor, and while some have complained about this, I enjoy the production. At points, it can be muddy, and not crisp enough, which is a downfall. The band itself is spectacular, and this album features amazing playing by all members. The musical direction, especially evident on "Daggers of Black Haze", "The Colours of the Beast", and "A Stare Bound In Stone", is greatly appreciated, and makes me have hope for the future of At the Gates.
However, this album contains some filler, that doesn't present anything new in the world of At the Gates. This includes "A Labyrinth of Tombs", "Seas of Starvation" and "In Death They Shall Burn". Lyrically, this album is great, although certainly seems to be piggybacking off of some ideas from their last album, which can be seen by simply looking at the song titles from both albums side by side. There are a great deal of similarities.
I'm both impressed and disappointed with this album, and for that reason I am giving it a 7.0/10.
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