Track Listing

1. Blinded By Fear
2. Slaughter Of The Soul
3. Cold
4. Under A Serpent Sun
5. Into The Dead Sky
6. Suicide Nation
7. World Of Lies
8. Unto Others
9. Nausea
10. Need
11. Flames Of The End
12. Legion
13. Dying
14. Captor Of Sin
15. Unto Others
16. Suicide Nation
17. Bister Verklighet

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17152 in Music
• Released on: 2002-07-22
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Limited Edition

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Perfect" is a word often used in reviews, usually without justification. But there's an argument for its use when describing Slaughter of the Soul, the final album by Gothenburg's At The Gates, originally released in 1995. As a musical expression of sheer disgust at this dirty world, you won't find better anywhere. This is partly due to the album's brevity: Just over half an hour long, it makes its painful, exhilarating point and ends--no posing, no preening. The same lack of self-indulgence shows through in the music itself.

Though often compared to Slayer, ATG were never self-consciously heavy. Instead, over their pulverising riffs, ATG use guitar harmonics much as Judas Priest did in the late 1970s ("Blinded by Fear" and the title track): they introduce delicate instrumentals recalling mid-period Black Sabbath ("Into the Dead Sky"): they even risk an atmospheric epic in "The Flames of the End", with its grand keyboard refrain, spectral whistles, electronic squeals and occasional metallic blast. Throughout, Tomas Lindberg delivers the most distraught and disturbing shriek. During "Unto Others", he even does it over a beautiful pastoral guitar--a brave and thrilling juxtaposition. Added to the album here are covers of Slaughterlord, No Security and Slayer: two demos and an unreleased track from the Slaughter… sessions. None of them add to the glorious original. --Dominic Wills

Customer Reviews

Heavy riff-mania...
Bought this when it originally came out (in its 11 track format) off the back of an Earache sampler and having heard their version of Captor of Sin. I was not disappointed. From the growling opening the album explodes into Slaughter of the Soul, which is truly up there as a true all time classic death metal anthem. Reason the album doesn't get more stars is because it fails to get back to that peak and becomes a little repetitive. Good stuff though, not quite 4 stars.

If you like Metal, you'll want one of these...
Okay firstly, At The Gates did NOT sound like Slayer. They've covered Slayer a few times in their unfortunately short career, and they're definitely influenced by them, but they're far more similar in sound to their peers in the Swedish/European Thrash/Melodic Death/Whatever the hell you want to call the freaking genre type stuff. Bands they reminded me of the first time I heard them included Entombed, Carcass and at times BoltThrower. Not Slayer. Now I've got that out of the way onto the review proper. At The Gates were a fantastic thrash metal band from Sweden, who mixed melody in with the aggression, and instead of penning songs about rotting corpses with no heads or wielding a battle axe against their foes dealt with what was going on around them through their music. As a major At The Gates fan, I must say that this is their most consistent, and if pushed, best record. Hence I'm giving this five stars. Personally I prefer their earlier efforts With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness and Terminal Spirit Disease, but they're less well produced and less accessible. Slaughter of the Soul taps in more to mainstream thrash stylings like Metallica and the aforementioned Slayer, and as such is probably the best place to start. All the songs are well written and there's no real filler to speak of unless you hate instrumentals in which case you'll find two filler tracks. My personal favourites are World of Lies and Cold, though all the tracks are of a high standard and full of catchy riffs and melodies. This is more extreme than the average metal record, at times heavier than hell, especially on tracks like Nausea or the bonus track Legion, but the consistent melody and rhythm throughout stops you from getting sick of the heaviness. As such, this is one of my favourite CDs, and one that's in constant rotation on my CD player at home. If you like metal, you owe it to yourself to check Slaughter of the Soul out.

PS: If you like these guys check out these bands. They're ex-At the Gates: The Haunted, Disfear, The Great Deciever. You won't be sorry

death classic
this has been rated one of the all time greats of death metal albums and i can't complain. the music flows rather well, some aspects do sound samy but then if you like one song why wouldnt you like the others. for guitar players and everyone else, the riffs are very catchy and very good to learn showing a very strong style of songwriting. older at the gates albums are very different to this, they sound more like undergound demos but this has a better recording quality and its bold and clear. to conclude, it is a good album for heavy metal fans and should be somewhere in your cd collection. definatly for fans of in flames (old or new stuff) and bigger death metal bands.