Review Summary: Delving into a moody and diverse set of songs that shares more in common with their earliest releases than the one everybody seems to remember.
I wonder what would have happened if Slayer had taken nearly two decades after
Reign in Blood to release
South of Heaven.
South of Heaven enjoys a huge amount of praise, but would it be as universally accepted if
Reign In Blood had been allowed to build twenty years of nostalgia and hype? If the criticism surrounding At The Gates’
At War With Reality is any indication, the answer is fairly obvious. While I’m not trying to directly compare
At War With Reality to
South Of Heaven, both releases were definitely deliberate attempts at doing something more than the simple no-frills/all-attitude style of their predecessors – and one was praised while the other has faced some critique. While not all blame can be placed here, a lot of it probably has to do with timing.
While Slayer quickly released another album before
Reign in Blood built an insurmountable reputation, At The Gates had to let
Slaughter of the Soul attain an almost untouchable mystique. This left
At War With Reality in the unenviable position of basically having no chance of living up to the hype. So, while it might have been a bit lacking in certain areas, it was still a very solid and enjoyable release that never had a chance. Hopefully fans are over the nostalgia trip, because
To Drink From the Night Itself is better than its predecessor in every way, and may even have to be mentioned alongside the band’s classic material (begrudgingly, I’m sure).
If I had to reference back to earlier albums,
To Drink From the Night Itself is a fairly even blend of
With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness and
Terminal Spirit Disease combined with the modern style of
At War With Reality.
With Fear’s influence is felt within the melodies, tempos, and overall structures of most the songs. Every facet is much more developed, nuanced, and diverse than on anything they’ve done since that 1993 release. Even tracks that begin in a more streamlined fashion such as “A Stare Bound In Stone” or “Palace of Lepers” inevitably end up evolving into something more; whether it’s “A Stare Bound in Stone” transitioning to a moody and melodic second half or “Palace of Lepers” bouncing between standard melodeath, melodic interludes, and something more akin to classic Voivod.
The songs that are more interesting, though, are the ones that delve down a more sullen and diverse direction. Tracks such as “Daggers of Black Haze” – which opens with some light classical influences before moving through a series of fully developed melodic sections – are the true highlight of
To Drink From the Night Itself. These songs generally (but not always) sacrifice a bit of bite in favor of fully-featured melodic death metal that is heavy on the moody atmospheres, and quick to seamlessly transition from one melody to the next.
To Drink From the Night Itself also has the distinction of containing not only one of my favorite At The Gates songs, but also one of my favorites of this entire year. “Seas of Starvation” is At The Gates’ moody, melodic, mid-paced death metal formula realized to its full potential. I don’t want to go into a track-by-track style description of the album, but if there is only one song from the album that you bother with, it should be “Seas of Starvation”.
At The Gates suffered from some undue criticism when they released
At War With Reality because it was directly compared with an album that had grown into an uncontrollable monster built on equal parts hype, nostalgia, and actual quality.
To Drink From the Night Itself shouldn’t have that problem because people can now temper their fantasies of unending
Slaughter of the Soul rehashes with realistic expectations of a band that always had more to offer than that one release.
To Drink From the Night Itself returns to the peak of At The Gates’ creative side by delving into a more moody, nuanced and diverse set of songs that shares more in common with their first few releases than the one everybody seems to remember. In the process, they very well may have released the best album in their history.
