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At The Gates Concert Review
Another summer, another reunion. For three years running, this season has seen a metal legend return for a ‘final farewell’ tour, with Emperor, Immortal, and now At the Gates as the greatest names, while others such as Carcass are still to come. With all the success and attention surrounding this new trend, metal fans can almost begin to take such reunions for granted. However, we must be careful not to be so greedy, and each of the ‘great three’ above has helped us realize this. Sitting at home and conjuring dream team revivals is easy; once in the presence of the music and men who defined their era and shaped those to follow, we can be nothing but thankful and feel nothing but lucky.
So it was with great anticipation that I set forth to the House of Blues, Chicago, on a sweltering Monday afternoon this past week. After negotiating traffic, the front desk, and seeing my anticipated interview with At the Gates disappear in a media meltdown, I made it to the floor in time for the second half of Municipal Waste’s set. Or rather, I made it to the ramp at the edge of the floor. To go further would have ensured my camera getting broken—and perhaps a bone or two besides—in the massive circle pits or the band’s nightly exercise of the wall of death.
Municipal Waste, led by Tony (vocals) and Ryan (guitar), were one of the earliest groups of the 2000’s thrash/trash revival and have built up a strong reputation on their live performances and general incorrigibility. With songs such as ‘Bangover’, ‘Born to Party’, and ‘Sadistic Magician’, Tony and company invoke the spirit of youth and irresponsibility by way of cheap puns, crass odes, and the inevitable gang vocal choruses. And they do it perfectly.
From pre-pubescent teenagers to the middle-aged, some of whom probably remember At the Gates’ last tour, Municipal Waste’s simple formula was working its magic. The audience was jammed into every crevice possible—wrapped around the bar, sitting up on the ramp railings, lined up five deep in the hallways to the bathrooms—forcing the security guard at the edge of the stage to climb up on a column platform just to get a good view of the floor. There, he would aim his flashlight at crowd-surfers to point them out to the security guards in the photo pit, more often than not shaking his head in disbelief of the bacchanal before him.
I was a little more appreciative and applauded with the rest (minus the drunken hollers), but still had greater empathy with the security than with the crowd. Municipal Waste plies their trade to great effect, but I still can’t help feeling as though I’m already too old for it.
Following them was Darkest Hour, the odd man out on the bill. The crowd remained just as packed in for their set as they had been for Municipal Waste, but their enthusiasm was definitely dampened and the security guards had no crowd-surfers to worry them. In fact, only a handful of pits broke out, if they could be called as much, the audience seemed to be simply biding their time and catching their breath. They were polite for the most part, and the band did have some enthused followers in the crowd, but their response was obviously less than Municipal Waste’s and probably Toxic Holocaust’s before them.
The band was no doubt familiar with this lukewarm welcome already, though, and soldiered through their set with admirable energy. They had placed crates between the monitors on stage and used them liberally throughout the set, though less dramatically than the stomping acrobatics of Suicide Silence a few months before in support of Nile.
Darkest Hour’s music was similarly less dramatic and seemed to lose something in the live setting. It may have been partially the crowd and partially the acts they were playing with, but the band’s music simply did not leave much of a unique impression, despite playing well as a group and individually. Kris Norris’s shredding scales, John Henry’s shouts and growls, Ryan Parrish’s narrow selection of drum rhythms—they all gelled into a tight and ultimately mediocre package. Their last song brought a decent response from the crowd as well as a mosh pit worth noting, but few of us were disappointed to see their set end.
A half-hour layover followed, during which the audience was understandably restless. Luckily, though, the house music proved to be adequate distraction, which was an unexpected pleasure. The House of Blues rarely has an exceptional soundtrack and earlier in the evening hadn’t done well with the likes of Lamb of God, but perhaps their intention was to save the best for last. Decapitated’s ‘Spheres of Madness’ was met with cheers, and Slayer’s classic ‘Angel of Death’ had many wailing along or nodding their heads.
And whatever the venue may historically lack in house music, its tech crew makes up in spades as one of the most reliable and punctual in the city. When the designated thirty minutes were through, the curtains drew back immediately and revealed At the Gates’ massive banner—their second-generation logo over an AK-47, entwined by a serpent reminiscent of Benjamin Franklin’s famous ‘Join or Die’.
The band members arrived promptly thereafter in sequence, hailing the crowd but making little unnecessary fanfare. Standing stage left were Anders and Jonas Björler, Tomas at center, Martin stage right, and Adrian Erlandsson behind a mighty kit on a riser. After a moment to drink in the audience’s adulation, Martin and Anders kicked off ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ and the entire room shouted, ‘Go!’ right along with Tomas as he charged to the fore.
Nearly all the members have toured the states with different groups since At the Gates was last here in ’96, but none of those shows could have matched this. Their synergy with each other and the audience was complete, and it hardly seemed as though the band had ever split up. The years have tempered their performance, especially of the early material, rendering it not quite as frantic or eldritch as on the old live tapes. The notes may have been the same, but the band plays today with a perspective—perhaps even a purpose—that only these many years could have given them.
The setlist was well constructed and drew from all eras of the band. In Tomas’s words, ‘When we did this, we promised we would play songs from every At the Gates release. Right now, we’re going to keep that promise.’ This served to introduce ‘All Life Ends’ from their EP ‘Gardens of Grief’, the first of many seminal releases in the band’s six year tenure. Altogether, their set ran: ‘Slaughter of the Soul’, ‘Cold’, ‘Terminal Spirit Disease’, ‘Raped by the Light of Christ’, ‘Under a Serpent Sun’, ‘Windows’, ‘World of Lies’, ‘The Burning Darkness’, ‘The Swarm’, ‘Forever Blind’, ‘Nausea’, ‘The Beautiful Wound’, ‘Unto Others’ (a recent addition), ‘All Life Ends’, ‘Need’, and an encore of ‘Blinded by Fear’, ‘Suicide Nation’, and the iconic closer, ‘Kingdom Gone’.
It was a pleasure to hear them tackle such gems as ‘Windows’, which was impeccably performed, but the band and audience both were clearly more focused on ‘Slaughter of the Soul’. Although the early tracks were met with great enthusiasm (from me especially), it was during tracks like ‘Cold’ and ‘Need’—slick, focused, and aggressive—that the pit truly exploded and the band were fully engaged.
As the band’s foremost voice and personality, Tomas Lindberg was the lightning rod, ranging from one side of the stage to another and cheering the audience as loudly as they cheered him. Without blazing pyrotechnics or attention-grabbing gimmicks, he still managed to exude a remarkable aura that places him among the most compelling frontmen I have seen. His ghastly vocals, neither quite shrieks nor growls, come as easily today as it did 12 years ago, albeit with less of a tortured edge. In fact, instead of brooding angst, which seemed pandemic in At the Gates’ early incarnation, the band’s presence was resolute, particularly the instrumentalists’. They were delivering with great focus, clearly enjoying themselves but doing so with a serious edge that lent their performance an additional gravitas.
Throughout their set there were few circle pits to speak of, but the frantic crush of the mosh and at the banister was enough to send bodies flying and terrify the few it caught by surprise. When the band’s encore began with the intro to ‘Blinded by Fear’, the front half of the floor surged forward, climbing up over each other with abandon, and in their midst I saw one lonely girl almost in tears, clearly neither dressed nor prepared for this sort of trial, try to flee the floor with arms flailing.
Tomas would occasionally break from the set to talk to the audience, introducing the next song, and thanking us numerous times for our support (then and now). At one point, he mentioned how much of a pleasure it was to be back in Chicago where so many of At the Gates’ influences are from. He mentioned a string of largely obscure names—Trouble, Master, Devastation, etc.—that some in the audience were more than happy to cheer, but many of the younger faces in the audience remained blank. As the band continued their set, I noticed some of the members were paying homage with their choice of t-shirt as well: Tomas with Nachtmystium, Jonas with Devastation, Anders with Trouble, and so forth. Tomas even had a tattoo of Trouble’s pointed logo on his forearm that he raised in salute before diving back into the rest of the set with vigor.
It is now common knowledge that At the Gates were solicited for a reunion some years ago, and only now have chosen to do so when ‘the time was right’. Their decision follows other legendary groups’ (quasi-) reunions such as Emperor and Immortal who set the bar almost impossibly high. But At the Gates, without any need for costumes or corpsepaint, have revived their glory masterfully and with great dignity. Their adamant decision not to record new material and to leave their legacy intact is an admirable one and is reflected in their performance. Although quite apart from their audience and imitators in many ways, the members of At the Gates are like us in how respectfully they hold their canon. For us finally share that great appreciation with them in person was an unforgettable pleasure. |
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