At the Gates Premiere New Song “Spectre of Extinction”
Here’s a nice way to bring the month of April to a close: At the Gates have premiered “Spectre of Extinction,” the first single from their new album, The Nightmare of Being!
Unsurprisingly, the song will rip you a new asshole. It’s the opening cut on the album, which means it has a totally epic, atmospheric intro, with about eighty seconds of music that could be their own track (and on some other albums, would be!). Then the song proper begins, and it’s classic AtG: brutal and melodic and fluid-yet-precise and guaranteed to get stuck in your head. The icing on the cake are some oh-so-sweet guest leads by King Diamond guitarist Andy La Rocque. It’s great stuff. Listen below.
Additionally, today (April 30) at 9 am PDT/ 12 pm EDT/ 6pm CET, the band will debut a Patric Ullaeus-directed music video for the track, with “chat-participation” of At the Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg Redant. Two things on which I’m not entirely clear: what “chat-participation” means, and why Tomas Lindberg is now Tomas Lindberg Redant. In any case, the embed is at the bottom of this post, so you can check that out as soon as it goes live.
The artist formerly known as Tomas Lindberg comments:
“It is always very hard to choose which song to release to the public first, especially with this album having so many layers and textures. We did feel, however, that this, the opening track of the record, represented the overall feel of the album. It has the musical depths that you would expect from an At the Gates track, and still carries that intensity and urgency that we have always tried to get across with our music.
“For the video, it was wonderful to be able to continue the work with the mighty Patric Ullaeus, as he understands our vision with the music and is willing to go all the way to portray the song’s inner dimensions. I think he did that excellently with this one and I’m very proud of the result. The lyrics deal with humanity’s will and how that clashes with our consciousness, and our knowledge of our mortality. Enjoy!”
The Nightmare of Being comes out July 2 on Century Media. Pre-order it here.
