Okay the new track is as awesome as that artwork.

Well ... they keep up the tradition of shitty videos if nothing else.

Could it even be recorded in the same location as Kingdom Gone? LOL.

And... yeah, nothing extremely dark or brooding or heavy. Just another SOTS type song indeed. OK.

Don't see anything wrong with the video, if anything it's actually pretty cool as far as performance videos are concerned. The new guitarist looks a bit "uncomfortable" I guess - maybe it's the hipster glasses, but that's about it .

Anyway, cool track. Stylistically it's more of the same - Slaughter of the Soul and some elements of With Fear..., but the songwriting is a lot more fluid and inspired sounding, I think. Definitely better than anything on "At War with Reality", at least.

Yeah, first impression is that it's already better than anything off the last album. Not that it's anything new or different, just a modern take on SotS material. Stoked to see it live in a month.

Agree with the comments above. New song is solid and what you'd expect to hear - nothing new or groundbreaking but certainly heavy and not bad. The major weakness of this band has been the drumming. I mean Adrian uses the same drum pattern in every song, just over and over and over. Not much creativity going on.

Haha, I'd just read this comment before opening the vid for the new track in another tab, and in that short time began sort of idly humming a "generic" At the Gates riff with that familiar beat behind it, and when the song started it perfectly synced up with what was in my head.

I still dig ATG (and this new song) though. It's like a Devin Townsend interview I read once where he was sort of mocking the idea of a Rush tribute he took part in, sarcastically saying stuff like, "oh yeah, just what the world needs, another Rush tribute;" and when asked why he had participated, he said, "because it's fucking Rush, man!"

I really liked the song. Simple, solid stuff. I liked it a lot more than I did almost everything on At War with Reality, that's for sure.

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Sounds like that riff was lifted straight from SOTS sessions. Problem is that the song doesn't really go anywhere. Pretty generic. Thing is, it beats most of At War with Reality, which really speaks to my dislike of that album (then again, posts here mostly show the same opinion).

I thought it was the Blinded By Fear location myself.

So, this is the music that has "conceptual" "connections" with "themes" from "The Red in the Sky is Ours"? Why do they even bother saying such nonsense? TRITSIO isn't even their money maker album, why yank true metalheads' chains?

I'm pretty sure it was Tomas who said that. Judging by the Decibel HOF entry, he's very nostalgic and looks back fondly on that album, and probably wanted to revisit those lyrical themes (that kind of "dark poetry" stuff) over the more straight forward direction later albums took. And besides, it's nowhere near as egregious as David Ellefson's claim that Super Collider would sound like Killing is My Business .

For the record, in the same interview Jonas Bjorler (the songwriter) admitted he has not listened to Red in the Sky is Ours even once, in over 20 years .

Cause that's the way people sell albums using nostalgia?
I like the beginning of the video but nothing more. And the song is lame.

Sounds good. Then again I’ve never held any loyalty or nostalgic feelings At The Gates in the past

That song's enjoyable. I'm not a fan of that weird muddy production. Everything sounds way too deep and it all bleeds together in a way that you don't really want in a metal record.

New song isn't too bad. Sounds like any random ATG song that isn't one of the classics - basically best realistic scenario for them at this point in their career. A full album of it'd be totally acceptable... hell, I'd even listen to it more than 3-4 times. If the last album had been all songs like the title track and Death and the Labyrinth I'd have done the same with it.

The snares sound off in the mix.

That was lazy as fuck. Sounds like a dumbed down version of Blinded by Fear.

For the record, I like SOTS. I thought the previous album was... OK, but unnecessary. But based off this single, fuck this.

Sounds like ATG is ready to play the last Warped Tour.

Drummer is so lazy and boring, the kind of rhythms a pop punk band would use in their songs.

Then again i also disliked SOTS. To me it sounded like watered down Dismember that pandered to hardcore/metalcore kids of the 90’s.

Same. I know that some people like that sound, but it has nothing to offer for me. Another band that shouldn't have come out of retirement IMO.

I think this new song is OK in a fun, catchy way, but I see what people are saying about the pretty basic drumming. Part of the reason Night Comes, Blood Black is my favorite from The Red... is the "bouncy" drum performance that gives it a unique feel for death metal. So it's clear Adrian can handle more interesting stuff when he wants to.

Well that was boring as shit.

Not really a news regarding the album, but you can listen to 2018 version of "Raped by the Light of Christ" here.

It lacks a punch in my opinion. The guitars are too quiet and overall it feels like something is missing. What do you think?

Way to pussify a great song ATG...

re-recording was OK, but added nothing. But going off the promo track, I probably wont even bother pirating this album. That's how phoned in it sounds.

I'm down with the title song. As melodeath goes, it's proficient enough. Easy to recommend to new potential fans as a starting point in the genre.

I agree that it's not all that intriguing, though. This ground has been tread for years.

Pew pew (sorry) riffs over skank beats never get old for me but yeah, that was quite underwhelming.

Decibel just gave the album 9/10, saying there are tons of RITSIO moments. Might just be trying to keep the band happy because they're headlining a Decibel fest this weekend, but I generally trust their opinion on these things so I'm going to hold out hope and give the full thing a shot.

https://soundcloud.com/decibelmagazine/at-the-gates-raped-by-the-light-of-christ-2018-db089

If you have something to contribute, use your words. You've been doing these stupid smiley posts a lot lately and it's really frustrating to people who are here to have an actual discussion.

Yeah, you always have to be a bit wary around Decibel. Their "lead review" is almost always high praise, the only exception I can even think of was when they gave the last Bloodbath a 5/10 (which the band members seemed disappointed and frustrated by ).

It's weird that so much of the promotion is centered on this album being a return to that sound (the pre-order page says it, and Tomas himself has said it) and yet, the song they chose to lead off the album bears no elements of that whatsoever. I suppose it does make one wonder whether or not it's all hype given the fact Red seems to have become more of a "cult classic" in recent years, while Slaughter is viewed more critically compared to the near universal praise it used to get.

At The Gates died many years ago with the inception of the godawful 'Slaughter of the Soul'. A single album that has spawned a whole shitfest of bands trying to copy the same lame style, and boy, did they succeed!

Well, if Decibel says...

You're right, they did die, just a little after the album came out . Honestly all the retroactive disdain the album receives always seemed really exaggerated and hyperbolic to me. So what if Shadows Fall and Darkest Hour took influence from it? So did Dismember and The Everdawn, and I don't hear people whine about those band's attempts to copy the same style.

Well that's the unholy stamp of death if I ever saw it.

Do people hate on Slaughter retroactively because of all the metalcore bands that aped it in the late 90s/early 2000s? I've always seen a lot of vitriol directed to it for "ruining metal" but I love that album. I like Red in the Sky and Burning Darkness as well, but Slaughter is just a nice tight 35 minutes of catchy melodeath.

I find metal fans in general are overly exaggerating about most things (see some repsonses in this thread alone). Not everything has to be the worst ever. I saw the same reaction when Carcass put out Surgical Steel, which to me was fun solid album but others were treating like it was field recordings of monkey sex.

I heard Slaughter before I heard metalcore bands and I still didn't like it. After "Red" everything else seemed like a half measure by comparison.

Surgical Steel was awesome.

I agree with both points, though I suppose sometimes people also exaggerate how good those albums are too , most of the hatred is probably just a reaction to all the hype and praise those albums get practically everywhere else on the internet.