Tomas Lindberg – At The Gates

There are some bands, some albums, that will forever remain legendary, and as a respectful ode to the very existence of metal itself, At The Gates is one of those bands. Hailing from the birth place of my favourite genre, Gothenburg, this band released killer albums between 1990 and 1996 only to disband and reform again in 2007 for a series of reunion shows and again in 2010. Here we are, 19 years later, after the release of what is considered the greatest melodeath album of all time, ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ with a brand new record from these Swedish metallers, ‘At War With Reality’, and blimey, what a monster it is! On behalf of Metal Obsession, I had the chance to talk to the mighty Tomas Lindberg, vocalist of this legendary band, about their new album and everything At The Gates!

Talking to me from his hometown in Gothenburg, I was a little stumped when I heard him but he was a happy and warm person, as he told me what the initial response has been to At War With Reality. “I’m fine, Prat! Everything’s great, going really well. In Europe we released a stream version a few days prior, and people really liked it. People outside the journalist profession heard it and at the time, the response was definitely overwhelming and we were very pleased with the response.We’ve played a few festivals, so we haven’t played any songs off the new record, the first show after the release of the album is in Finland sometime in November and that’s going to be the first time the fans get to hear a new song live! (SEE? I should be in Finland!) Very, very fun to look forward to.”

I was already fangirling to the maximum and I got straight to asking about the new album, the band’s first release since 1995! Tomas shared his thoughts on how it felt to be composing again and what it was like making a record after so long. “We believe in the idea of ourselves, that’s the only way to produce a record. We understand a lot of people are understanding and we can’t try to second guess what everybody believes this record to be. So we have to do it only for ourselves. If people like it then it’s a bonus so we actually concentrated on writing the record and having it finished before we announced that we were releasing a new album. It wasn’t recorded, but it was written so we actually said to ourselves let’s write it and if we don’t feel totally at ease with it, we just wait. That was a very confident way of working and we’re very happy with the result!”

Now I don’t know about you but to me ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ is one of the greatest metal albums ever written/composed and when you’re talking to one of the people behind one of the world’s greatest album’s you can’t help but bring it up! I asked Tomas how ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ has managed to stick around all these years despite the band’s hiatus, and whether the new record features any similar elements. “Well, I mean, it’s the same people that have written it in one way. Of course it will definitely have something that is related to it. As for what is special with ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ and that has survived all these years, is that we have always been a band that has stayed true to ourselves and our music. We always write what we felt at that second, therefore, there’s always some different between each At The Gates record – there’s an evolution in our music. I think that red thread is always there, but I think the main thing is honesty and open song writing.

Tomas then told me a little about what ideas the band had in mind when writing this album and that there wasn’t really an underlying concept. “Well, I think, we just let ourselves go, anything goes. But that also means we have to equally agree with everything – if someone doesn’t agree that has to go. So that is a very good creative atmosphere but it also takes a lot of time and effort. I would say when Anders started showing us the first stuff, we were very pretty confident that this stuff was going to sound good, so I didn’t really need a grand concept for how the whole record should sound like. We found pretty early on that all the songs had a little bit of a different emotion from each other whereas ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ is very aggressive and has a direct focus on hate – this one has few deeper more emotional heavy songs. It’s more a concept of not having a concept: we just let the tracks develop their own personality.”

The band reformed in 2007 with the intention of doing some reunion tours before splitting again in 2008, and getting back together in 2010. So did they have this new album in mind the whole time? “I think the idea to do a new record grew on us in one way because we wanted to do it. We felt that we were getting into this real band kind of mode again. There was only one thing missing which was being creative together again and we didn’t talk about it openly until Anders had written his solo record. After that he started writing. After that, what happened is he came up with stuff, approached me and asked me if it could be a starting point for us. That’s when I started working on it with no pressure.”

‘At War With Reality’ out now via Century Media Records

With the number of changes the band has gone through, it’s natural for there to be some sort of evolution or change. Tomas shared his thoughts on the same. “I think we kind of picked up where we left off because the same five people were together for the first time since then, but, of course, things have changed. We have developed as people; as artists; as musicians; and everything; but Anders believes our main influences as a band, what the five of us have listened to collectively, is still intact. So I would feel that this album unintentionally in one way sums up the whole At The Gates career. It has elements from all our records and pulls everything we’ve done together in one new record!”

So has the double reformation, the hiatus, etc., impacted the band to a large extent?

‘I think the only thing that could have been involved in that is the expectations on us because before we never worked with expectations and we tried to change those expectations into something that was just positive. And to work with that instead of being nervous and frustrated. [We] see it more as inspiration that people will listen and people actually care that whole time frame has worked in a positive sense on us.”

People ask me all the time where I think metal started from, and I’m quite biased in my answer – Scandinavia. Whether there is some truth behind it or not, for me, the metal that comes out from Finland or Sweden, there truly is nothing like it especially if you’re a melodeath fan and Tomas shared his thoughts on being part of one of the pioneering bands of the Gothenburg sound. “Never! [laughs] I mean, that’s also because, as I said, as people down to earth, we try to stay that way and we always secreted stuff for ourselves that might be one of the reasons paradoxically that has been the thing that has sparked it. A lot of bands try too hard to be successful, where as we just go ahead and do what we always did. And that originality and honesty is always portrayed in the sound we create as a band. People feel what we do is true.”

Given that it has been 2 decades since the release of their last album, I asked Tomas what the funniest reaction was when they announced ‘At War With Reality’. “Well, to be honest, there were so many reactions and the thing is we don’t really try to read too much into it. We read what people post on our Facebook page, we actually interact with the people, with the fans, and there are one out of 500 sometimes on our Facebook that says something negative. People have opinions – this is normal – and we are very open to that because over the years they would have built up an expectation of what our record should sound like and if that doesn’t apply to our idea, that’s too bad. I mean the obvious reactions are the old school fans after all these years, they may post on Facebook wanting it to sound like the first record. That would be in my opinion: a sell out, to try to please fans for the sake of making them happy. And the only way to move is to go forward. You can always listen to the old albums if you don’t like it, no big deal! But this is something that happens to all bands, so it’s important that we just stay true to ourselves.”

We also talked about the new In Flames album and Tomas had some very interesting things to say about his fellow Swedish metallers and their new album. “I don’t listen to their music too much but I’ve heard that this change was coming, it was imminent. It’s not like this is strange, it’s been building up for the last four records but you know the internet is what it is and people can say whatever they want.”

Fun thing about talking to your idols? There are things about them that you would never have imagined before and with Tomas, I related even more because he’s also a teacher. “For me it’s not a problem, it has been a lot of work. First off logistically, trying to fit all the schedules in, but also more I think the hard work for me has been to try to be one person all the time. I don’t believe in stepping in and out of roles, I try to be natural when I’m a teacher and when I’m a metal vocalist. The kids or parents should be able to see a video of me performing and I need to be able to stand behind that and explain myself and the other way around. The metal community should be able to see me as a teacher. It’s the same with my family life and I think all this is important for your mental health as well!”

Tomas also mentioned their touring plans for Australia!

Yeah definitely! We are back in a way now. We will try to keep our feet on the ground, we will be doing a lot of touring with the new album but I do need to keep my day job. We won’t tour 500 times a year. We will go to Australia with this album, that’s a promise. We’ll go because we want to play music for the Australian fans, not because we need to pay our rent, and maybe we’ll get new ideas for new music from there, so definitely! But we won’t tour and tour until we get tired of it. It’s important that we don’t lose our heads here.”

Last message from Tomas to fans? “I want to thank everybody for the reactions so far. Right now, we’re waiting too. We’re really excited about it and touring with the new album!”

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