Earlier this week, the metal world was shocked and excited to learn that At The Gates would be working on a new album, At War With Reality, their first in nearly two decades. But, why now?
Decibel Magazine scored the first word with the band's frontman, Tomas Lindberg since the announcement.
On when the wheels began to turn on a new album:
I think a lot happened, mentally, when we decided to continue touring. When we started to do the global thing in 2011. That whole idea of being an active band, touring and hanging out, just grew on us, I guess. To be able to be in a band that has no internal problems whatsoever, to be able to tour around the world together with some of your best friends, it´s just incredible, mind-blowing even. Then the idea just grew on us.
Later adding…
But this is a very creative album that we are writing right now, it´s not a comfortable “Slaughter of the Soul Pt. 2” or anything like that, it´s an album that I feel is pushing our own boundaries, and challenges our collective creative intellect. And that is the main reason for us to do this, it´s for our own sake. We could easily go out and continue touring the old stuff successfully for quite a while, I think, but this is us putting ourselves on the line here, and we do that solely because we feel that we need to do this, this material is too strong to say no to.
Linberg also revealed they've been working on the album since last August, and have about 14 tracks written with 11 or 12 deemed album worthy.
On comparisons to Carcass' album, Surgical Steel:
We set our own bar—and it’s higher than Slaughter of the Soul and Surgical Steel combined. [..] Jeff [Walker] has been picking my brain about this for a long time, and we ARE on a similar journey, the two bands. And seeing them not die doing this maybe helped ease the angst a little, haha! And it’s a good album, Surgical Steel, it really is—and seeing the band live in 2013 with new songs in the set list was invigorating, but remember they had to follow up Swansong, and not Heartwork…
Definitely head over to Decibel to read the full interview.
At The Gates expect their new album At War With Reality to be released at the end of the year. My anticipation is building!
