Slaughter of the Soul

After Svensson left between Gardens and Terminal, Terminal Spirit Disease marked a more straightforward and less death metal-y sound, but this did not seem like a problem at first.... Until Slaughter of the Soul was released and all those problems seen on Terminal Spirit Disease were exacerbated and turned this album into a hot flaming mess that somehow manages to be hailed as a masterpiece despite being the hallmark of a bad album that is clearly inferior in every way compared to their predecessors.

This album is the most thrash adjacent of the 4 albums before their first breakup, this does not sound bad in a vacuum, but considering that their previous albums feature a more death metal sound, this album is nothing more than a watering down of their sound compared to past outputs. Another thing that marked the decline of this album is that they went all in on melodies and with such stripped off everything that can be associated with death metal, but guess what? THIS album is what the mallcore kids end up copying instead of something like their debut, so most melodeath for the next 20 years after this album came out does not resemble death metal at all, just angrier thrash metal that sounds like a poor Slayer imitation, if the lyrics are swapped to generic edgy teen misanthropic shit that only garner laughs from the common folk instead of something terrifying from a band like Dragged Into Sunlight or Xasthur.

Songwriting wise, every song sounds pretty similar, all the riffs and solos are pretty interchangeable, swap one for the other and no one could spot a difference. The ideas for the songs here are concerningly low too, 9 tracks and only at 30 minutes of run time, it is as if they are trying to stretch their ideas for as long as possible and 30 minutes were the best they could. But even when all songs sound similar, those that tried to implement something new into their sound, like Cold, clocked in at a really short song length which makes it even more irritating, its like they just half assed this new idea and just want to do nothing more than selling out their sound, if the simple and repetitive riffs that were spammed in this album weren't an indicator enough. The songs also follow a basic, done to death verse-chorus structure that opens with a chug, then a Gothenburg melodic thrash riff that repeats itself until the end, saving for solos that sounds so generic and uninspired that I rather listen to those riffs that repeat themselves.

Instruments/vocals/production wise (I'm tying all of these together because production problems will be involving those 2 as well), holy shit is this brickwalled to hell, the guitars sound monotonous (even during the solos), the bass is missing (maybe this album was what popularized the Newsted-ing of bass and bassists, at least Metallica knew that it was a mistake), the drums sounds... Okay the drums are actually fine, just triggered, or drum machine-y, but it has enough variety that keeps me listening to this dumpster fire. The vocals are really bad though, it's like Tomas fried his vocal cords before recording this album, and kept this tone for the entire album, making the entire thing really monotonous and boring, ironically including some clean vocals would have helped, unlike many bands that this album influenced would. Tying all these together would be the production, everything sounds so compressed, it genuinely felt like there is no room for the instruments to breathe and express themselves, like a corporate product, completely soulless like melodeath bands signed under Nuclear Blast (maybe this is why the album is named this way?). When they were signed to other record labels prior to this, it sounded more dynamic but somehow Earache just decides to brickwall this album to shit after signing ATG?

All this, can be traced back to Svensson leaving ATG, if he hadn't left, the songwriting could have been more diverse, the songs could have been longer (this isn't fucking grindcore 94 pop guys), hell the production wouldn't be so bad if he was still around. Overall, his departure was the point where the band began its downfall, even though it might not be obvious at first.

This album marked the point where melodic death metal began selling out to the mallcore kids, and it is evident by the fact that the same mallcore kids started bands that did a similar sound to this and not real melodeath like their debut. If you want an authentic melodic death metal experience, just check out their 3 albums before this, or check out Intestine Baalism.

If you see an ATG fan who hates Alf Svensson (more common than you think, especially if he's a fan of this album and everything after this) because of his more experimental approach to songwriting and composition, he's a mallcore kid and you have my explicit permission to kick his shit in.

Highlights: Under a Serpent Sun (where the 5% came from, a mid song in an album full of garbage)