Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: At the Gates’ The Red in the Sky is Ours Inducted Into the Hall of Fame!

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

We’re almost exactly two months away from the worldwide release of At the Gates’ At War With Reality, the Swedish melodeath masters’ couldn’t-be-more-anticipated, nearly-20-years-in-the-making follow-up to Decibel Hall of Fame pillar Slaughter of the Soul. Not too much to live up to—just their entire legacy, compounded by the fact that Carcass, Gorguts and Godflesh have returned to not only relevance but dominance in recent years after protracted absences.

So, since we have until October 28 to choke ourselves on the hype (“Holy shit, did you hear that 10-second snippet on the official album teaser?!”), let’s go way back in the day and celebrate Gothenburg’s finest in their infancy. Yes, 1992 debut full-length The Red in the Sky Is Ours gets HOF honors in the October Decibel. For those of you who only “go!” for Slaughter’s infectious and influential riffage, you’ll be surprised to find four guys from that classic’s lineup making very different music just three years earlier. As Chris Dick—the iron man behind a whopping 36 of our 116 HOFs to date—writes in the intro, “At the Gates represented a musical shift. Not content with the standard offerings—mostly structural and presentational—of the day, they found enlightenment in varied forms such as classical music, early black metal, progressive rock, folk music and jazz. Fused into classic death metal (Autopsy, Morbid Angel) and hardcore/punk, the unlikely pairing of disparate styles created something new.” So, give The Red a read and a listen, and keep wondering how much—if any—of that old-school approach will materialize on AWWR.

October’s 10th Anniversary issue of Decibel also features Electric Wizard, Opeth, and The Haunted, Incantation and Midnight, and can be purchased here but why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?