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The circumstances of its creation make this a difficult album to process, let alone assess. Ever since Swedish death metal gods At The Gates surfaced on the early 90s tape-trading circuit, Tomas Lindberg was one of extreme metal’s most loved and respected frontmen. His out-of-control, edge-of-sanity rasp conveyed raw emotion like no other, providing a genuine streak of danger, derangement and disturbance in an era of 10-a-penny Cookie Monster garglers, forming a unique contrast with the high melodic precision of his bandmates.
It was a voice that paid no heed to the future; untrained and unrestrained, every line was projected with maximum force, conviction and commitment, as if every shriek might be his last. At the end of 2023, Tomas – known affectionately to his friends and fans (often the same thing) as Tompa – was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He recorded all of these vocals the day before undergoing mouth surgery, but the cancer spread, and, heartbreakingly, Tomas died last autumn. This time, these really are his last shrieks. This knowledge, combined with the devastating morbidity of the title (Tompa’s own choice), make The Ghost Of A Future Dead a pretty overwhelming experience.
There is, however, a more joyful reason to be overwhelmed, which is that this album fucking rules. There have been pros and cons to each ATG LP since 2014’s At War With Reality – their first after nearly 20 years, belatedly following up 1995’s epochal masterwork, Slaughter Of The Soul.
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2021’s The Nightmare Of Being reconnected the band with the free-thinking progressive experimentation of their earliest work, with plenty of grand moments to savour, but this time there are no saxophones, orchestras, flashy tempo shifts or ponderous epics. The Ghost Of A Future Dead is a concentrated, fat-free, back-to-basics deal, song lengths averaging less than four minutes, ATG’s pendulum swinging back towards blissful scampering thrash attacks, compulsive breaks and sumptuous melodies.
The return of co-founding guitarist Anders Björler to the creative process after a decade away must be a key factor in this resurgent energy. As ever, there are discreetly offbeat atmospheric touches: unnerving twists of dissonance counterpointing the harmonic grace; the enigmatic midtempo gothic surge of In Dark Distortion; elegiac but ominous acoustic instrumental Förgängligheten (‘Transience’).
But the impulse throughout is for relentless, hook-driven, heads-down melodic death metal, as only At The Gates can deliver. On his final performance, Tomas wields words like a weapon, spitting apocalyptic wisdom with his visceral sense of rhythm, jabbing the listener with each agonised syllable of his dry, caustic yelp. The gorgeous, creamy leads of Anders and Martin Larsson then act as an emollient, soothing the wounds inflicted by Tompa’s acid tongue.
As well as his vocal intensity, Tomas remains one of metal’s all-time great lyricists, and his literate but metal-asfuck poetry is on top form here. He also had final say on sequencing, which is perfect, the LP working both as a stellar collection of individual bangers and a flowing organic whole, capably capping a mighty legacy.
The Ghost Of A Future Dead is out April 24 via Century Media.
