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Nov 14, 20224 min read

At The Gates - Slaughter of the Soul (1995)

FROM THE CRYPTS - CELEBRATING PAST ALBUM RELEASES in the HISTORY of HARD ROCK & HEAVY METAL…



On November 14, 1995, At The Gates released the fourth full-length studio album Slaughter of the Soul via Earache Records.


It was their last album before their eleven-year breakup from 1996 to 2007. Slaughter of the Soul is considered a landmark in Melodic Death Metal and played a major role in popularizing the Gothenburg scene, alongside The Jester Race by In Flames and The Gallery by Dark Tranquillity. The album was recorded and mixed in Studio Fredman, early 1995.



Background:

Throughout 94-95, the band continued touring and in 1995 released their most commercially and critically successful album: Slaughter of the Soul. The album is regarded as their strongest Death Metal effort, compared to their previous albums. This album firmly rooted the band as one of the leaders of the Swedish Metal scene, the "Gothenburg sound" of Melodic Death Metal. The band received international attention for the album, gaining them several U.S. tours and heavy rotation of the music video for Blinded by Fear on MTV in America, but despite this international success, the Björler brothers departed in 1996. The remaining members decided it would be impossible to continue without them, so the band broke up.


Andy La Rocque's Neo-classical guest solo on Cold was widely acclaimed as one of the greatest Metal solos and guitarist Anders Björler admitted in 2007 that he still could not play it properly.



Reissues:

A 2002 Reissue contained 11 tracks from the original 1995 release of Slaughter of the Soul, plus 6 bonus audio tracks. Three of the bonus tracks were cover songs, two were demo tracks, and 1 was a previously unreleased track, recorded during the Slaughter of the Soul sessions. The 2006 reissue contained everything from the 2002 reissue, but also included an additional bonus DVD, which featured a 35-minute behind-the-scenes documentary as the highlight. The 2008 reissue contains everything from the 2002 and 2006 rereleases (all audio and DVD material), as well as additional DVD footage—an eight-song live set, recorded in Kraków, Poland on December 30, 1995.



Critical Reception:

On March 6, 2013 Slaughter of the Soul was ranked No. 8 on Metal Injection’s Top 10 Influential Heavy Metal Albums. Click this link to watch the video with commentary from Metal Injection (and others) on why Slaughter of the Souls was chosen and the impact it had; https://youtu.be/WD1xaYVTfvE


In his review for AllMusic, Steve Huey gave the album a slightly underhanded, but positive review, stating;

“When it was first released, At the Gates' Earache debut Slaughter of the Soul was regarded as a generally excellent example of Gothenburg-style Melodic Death Metal, and certainly the band's best and most focused album to date. But the commonly held view was that it wasn't anything all that special, either. After all, it lacked the intricate twin-guitar leads of In Flames, the complex song structures of Dark Tranquillity, the progressive artistry of Edge of Sanity, or even the rock & roll underpinnings of latter-day Entombed. Slaughter of the Soul was more obviously rooted in American Thrash (especially Slayer) than its peers, and didn't seem to be consciously trying to break new ground. It was simply a stripped-down, no-frills Melodic Death album that hit all the basic points of the style. In hindsight, though, that's precisely what made the album resonate so strongly. It gets those basics gloriously right: rhythmically kinetic riffs, tight song construction, and enough tempo and dynamic contrasts to keep the listener engaged. More than on any of the band's previous albums (and in contrast to the more sweeping visions of their Gothenburg cohorts), the songs on Slaughter of the Soul are concise, sharply honed assaults; only one makes it all the way to the four-minute mark. The tempo shifts are executed with stop-on-a-dime precision and never feel randomly placed; the band always seems fully in control of its furious outbursts.
So even if Slaughter of the Soul wasn't revolutionary, it turned out to be the leanest, meanest, and most focused example of the Melo-Death style. Key to its influence was the way its straightforward aggression and back-to-basics approach kept the music simple enough to be duplicated: a whole generation of metalheads across the Atlantic used this record as a textbook for learning to play this style. It's also important to note that in place of the usual guttural death grunts, vocalist Tomas Lindberg here adopts a strangled shriek that actually keeps the lyrics somewhat intelligible. Not only does it put a more human face on the music, it also bears a significant resemblance to the kinds of vocals that were coming into vogue among screamo bands in the American punk underground. This point of connection helped set the stage for At the Gates' massive influence on the metalcore movement, which became the predominant style in American metal during the first decade of the 2000s. This legion of imitators was what finally stamped Slaughter of the Soul as not merely excellent, but as an all-time classic and one of the most influential metal albums of the ‘90s.”

Noteworthy:

Blinded by Fear was covered by The Haunted (composed largely of ex-At the Gates members) on their Japanese version of their live/double disc album, Live Rounds in Tokyo and was also covered by Fleshgod Apocalypse on their Mafia EP.


Tracks from the album have made appearances in several video games:


• Blinded by Fear was made available as downloadable content for Rock Band 2 video game on March 28, 2008. Later, it was included in the game's retail Metal Track Pack add-on content disc, released on September 22, 2009 in North America. The song is considered one of the most difficult songs in the series to perform on drums, due to its fast tempo.


• The title track is featured in both Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned and Tony Hawk's Proving Ground.



Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells


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