The Red in the Sky Is Ours

Although some time ago I have done it myself, I don't like it when a review makes direct reference to the site where it is being written, for me one of the features of a good review is that it is timeless and understandable in all its aspects. But in this review it is impossible to distance the relationship between this album and Metal Archives. Because the relationship between this site and this release is quite deep, I, and probably many others, had known At The Gates through "Slaughter of the Soul" but it was thanks to this site and the fact that this album is one of the sacred cows, that we got to know another side of At The Gates. Reading so many people talking about it, explaining why this "The Red in the Sky Is Ours" was so good and experiencing for the first time listening to it was a really incredible journey, in fact there was a time when I was really obsessed with this album and more specifically, with Alf Svensson's work, and of course there are reasons to be obsessed.

In my review of "Above the Ashes" I already talked about the inherited profile of the online metal culture of the first decade of the 2000s, and I truly believe that this is one of the albums that was best suited to reach the position of sacred cow. A work coming from the same band whose fourth album greatly influenced the metalcore scene that was producing so much hate in the 2000's, but which had none of those characteristics but quite the opposite. "The Red in the Sky Is Ours was belatedly admired because almost all of its qualities screamed "underground", it was dark, raw sounding yet melodic, bringing out the best of the Gothenburg sound, but it was also complex, labrynthic, eager to explore and discover its own limits. And now, with all the time that has passed, with how things have changed in the scene, I think it's a good time to revisit At The Gates' debut.

All the descriptions I've used before, even if they seem a bit vague and generic, the truth is that they go well with this specific album, it's a particular take with a lot of personality that inherits the sound of the pioneer bands of the swedish scene like Entombed or Carnage, hence that satisfying tonality that the guitar has during the whole long play, and it also has that melodicism, that, far from taking away the heaviness of the overall sound, only adds more layers in how the compositions are approached. And the compositions really feel rich, special and above all, dynamic. The songs on this album are like the year 2020, different apocalyptic events are happening all the time. Even if the joke was bad it is still a reality that the compositions are colossal in this aspect, there are hardly any moments to breathe, and the most curious and fascinating thing is that each member involved in the song seems to go on their own, playing their part without taking into account what the others are doing, and yet everything seems to fit perfectly, obviously it fits because it has been written to be so, but it is fascinating how each dimension of this record is chaotic to the core and still feels so satisfying.

I really like the production, it's quite dirty and raw, much more than many of their contemporary compatriots, and it really works in their favour, it highlights more the underground and experimental atmosphere of the release, reminding us at every moment that this is the project of some guys who radiate talent recording with almost no resources. This fact stands out even more in the momentary, but exceptional, violin moments, I think I read that they were not happy with how the result turned out, but I think it's one of the best parts of the album, the extremely dirty production of the violin gives personality to each of its appearances, making the compositions more exotic and unexpected, never knowing how the track is going to progress. The individual performances are also fantastic, each member performs with the maximum possible intensity in their section, they are very trained and dedicated to these compositions, there are lots of transitions that shouldn't work and they manage to do it thanks to a strong and confident performance, despite its rawness you can understand a professionalism and passion in each note that gives it a very special charm. Also shout-out y to Tomas Lindberg and his performance of pure neurotic screams, another of those elements that maybe in another album wouldn't work but thanks to the way it's constructed every element seems simply essential.

At The Gates' debut has, without a doubt, a well-deserved status for the most part, the attributes that made it special, both in its initial release and in its media resurgence in the first decade of the 2000s, are still present and intact, the result of a timelessness created by true geniuses. It is also a reminder to ourselves not to stay on the surface and to look for and delve into those works that have a unique and risky vision, since, although there is a lot of junk in these fields, there is no better feeling than discovering a work with these characteristics for the first time. The main reason why I decided to write this review is because I partly feel that the praise of this work is getting smaller and smaller, even on this own site. Maybe as a consequence of a culture war that no longer exists, and because a whole new generation doesn't feel so much appeal for this work. Be that as it may, it never hurts to remember the greatness of works like this, so that their memory goes further than the memory of any of us.

There is nothing else quite like At the Gates’s The Red in the Sky Is Ours. It is its own unique entity, one that has never been successfully mimicked or replicated; in fact the closest anyone has ever come was when At the Gates themselves followed up with its successor With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness a year later. But even that album moved closer to the aesthetics of early traditional Swedish melodic death metal in terms of production and atmosphere, despite retaining a lot of the avant-garde songwriting traits found on this debut. TRITSIO on the other hand is the truly most detached and dissonant singular project from the scene that would go on to become death metal’s most accessible form. Accessibility here? There’s a reason Slaughter of the Soul is the most popular At the Gates album…

Instead of the crystal clear guitar assault of later At the Gates, TRITSIO features a slightly fuzzy guitar tone and a rough, unpolished atmosphere. But the riffs present here are some of the most exciting and unpredictable that I’ve ever heard. It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth of noise that guitar duo Anders Björler and Alf Svensson have created for this album. Svensson in particular needs to be given recognition for his contributions, as a certain level of ambition and outside-the-box thinking was lost with his departure after the first two At the Gates albums, when the band would go on to become a more traditional melodeath act.

Most good records have a handful of really incredible main riffs, but in this case pretty much each song has its own collection of insane riffs. Whether it’s an abrupt or smooth transition, TRITSIO changes gears at nauseating intervals, with song structures that twist and contort around themselves into even more grotesque creations. The buzzing guitar tones operate at an almost symphonic level at times, creating a sort of twisted elegance that is almost impossible to pin down. There’s a sprinkle of violin featured to maximize these effects, particularly and most memorably on the instrumental back half of ‘The Red in the Sky Is Ours / The Season to Come’ and the outro of ‘Within’.

Along with the unhinged guitar work and Jonas Björler’s equally fuzzy bass, you have Adrian Erlandsson’s drums, which like the rest of the featured instruments refuse to remain rigid. When the guitars become more frantic, the drumming mirrors it with unrelenting fury. When the guitars start to become more off-kilter or unorthodox, the drum rhythms slow down, while still remaining complex and intricate. It almost feels like he’s missing beats but in reality this is just an effect of the crooked nature of the songs. Listening to this is like stepping into a funhouse at times, with weird mirrors contorting certain parts of the songs and molding them into irregular shapes. And Jonas’s bass, which is usually hidden behind the muffle of the guitars actually gets some interesting rays of light throughout, when the guitars pause at odd moments and his noodling is bathed in the limelight.

For as much chaos that these young Swedes could muster with their musical chops, it’s a wonder that a vocalist could stand out amongst it. Yet Tomas Lindberg somehow manages to vocalize every tormented piece of composition that his band mates wrote. It’s not your traditional death growl; more of a shrieking sound but it aids the music perfectly. He sounds utterly insane on every track, and this is all on top of manic riffs and truly schizophrenic compositions. He’s a little lower register than on the later pure melodeath content, but in result is haunting and gives off a more intense aura.

It’s a miracle that there’s room for every member to shine on TRITSIO but they all somehow manage to compliment each other incredibly well, in particular the juxtaposition of the guitar work. There’s certain riffs that get deliberately repetitive; they lull the listener in with their sluggish buzzing and then they jolt into a twisted, unbalanced head-jerker seconds later. The pitch will get higher, the mood will become more intense, and the song will find its next gear. It’s hard for me to pick individual tracks, but I think these traits are best exemplified on ‘Through Gardens of Grief’, ‘Claws of Laughter Dead’, and ‘Night Comes, Blood Black’. These songs go through so many different structural transformations all while remaining coherent and with a firm theme throughout. Meanwhile, I think ‘Kingdom Gone’ and the closer ‘City of Screaming Statues’ in particular fuse these layers with hints of melody and a sense of grandeur that would be fully realized on later albums. So infectious is Lindberg’s anguished shouts of “KINGDOM… FUCKING… GONE!”, I can’t resist the temptation here, while most of the album’s melody is in the riffs themselves and less in sing along moments.

It’s hard to overstate the otherworldly feelings that TRITSIO can extract from a listener. This record is elegant—even hypnotic at times but also completely tormented and unhinged as well. It’s a roller coaster of emotion that cascades in waves over the listener, each fiercer and more forceful than the last. The most impressive thing for me is that this is a debut album and all of the members were still very young when writing this. It’s a shame that after their first two albums At the Gates mostly abandoned this abstract sense of writing and settled for a more streamlined sound. While I do enjoy Terminal Spirit Disease, Slaughter of the Soul, and subsequent releases after the band’s reformation, there’s something much more magnetic about this early material. It remains an individual style that I doubt any combination of musicians could master other than the ones who did it here at the time that it was created. It feels very much in the moment and frozen in time, and our only proof that such a masterpiece could have ever existed was the completion and distribution of this magnificent piece of art.

By 1992, the year this was released, the death metal scene around the world was already alive and well and in fact jam-packed with some of the most ferocious material ever heard in the genre. With the likes of American or English pioneers Deicide, Suffocation, Carcass or Napalm Death all having released a brand of death metal of a brutal and technical ilk, it followed a dawning act from Sweden may not contend on those fronts and should bring its own cultural originality and flavor to the scene as an advantage over the others. Countrymen Entombed or Dismember had already released their own contributions to the forming of first wave Swedish death metal earlier in the decade - the infamous buzz saw guitar tone and a blunter, more straightforward and melodic death metal to the Americans' faster paced and more clinical approach.

At the Gates on their debut here retain that more musical edge rooted in melody that's typical of that part of the world's scene at large, but also borrow from the US bands some of the pure death metal grit as heard on an instance like the part on 'Within' with the rapid chromatic hammer-on/pull-off riff in solo before a climactic hail of blast beats come crashing in. The composition is however most focused on establishing a foundation of minor-scaled melody that ventures out to flirt with chromatic extensions.

Which brings us to the following aspect: it's as if the album is between two minds. Instead of the versatile influences on display working for it, there's rather a feeling of high experimentation where the songs develop too much on at once when they might've needed a more grounded sense of identity. It comes across as a big playground with loads and loads going on, which can be entertaining from pure curiosity, but really the average song will look to develop a key part but then go to some sort of prog start/stop action (an occasional Atheist impression, eg. 'City Of Screaming Statues'), tentative at best, then all of a sudden embarks on another tremolo picking excursion (that hardly adds much). And then maybe the violin comes in, timidly, and laudable is the willingness to push the boundaries of metal broadly speaking, but it sounds distinctly meager and undersized, and it's like it's pushed onto the scene with coercion rather than with compositional cohesiveness. Again, tentative, but these are young musicians and the maturity required for the ambitions of this record couldn't have been there.

So as a result, too much of this is an awkward blending of appetizing at first but ultimately too raw for its own good. The riff quality just isn't there for 45min of such an enterprise. A lot of it is pedestrian quality only, with the multitude of parts attempting to drown out the absence of top caliber individual hooks. The heavier stuff is heavy but not nearly like what was available around and the melodic stuff can be interesting at times; the ending of 'Within' is a rare section that gathers genuine momentum that might connect with the listener; but doesn't qualify as highly epic or sorrowful. The emotion derived from this work may hardly be one that'll stay with the audience, and the point seems more geared towards the novelty presented by the general undertaking on display, with the historical significance it entails.

Alternative title: The best ATG album

I've been wanting to review this for a long time, but due to the eccentricities that this album possesses, I've found it hard to properly analyze this album into words. But unlike Imperial Circus Dead Decadence, whose eccentricities are very avant-garde, theirs are still pretty easily translated into words, while this album is just... weird, like a primitive melodeath album that was written in a very dissonant way. And this is no mistake, as Alf Svensson, the brains behind this album and the next album after this, is known to have a lot of really, REALLY weird and extreme ideas, as quoted by Tomas Lindberg: "Since Alf was older than us and had the most extreme and twisted ideas, we felt there was total creative freedom." And indeed, Svensson used his creative freedom to create this one of a kind work that might never be replicated, before the Bjorler brothers decided to trash them all in favour of a more mallcore-adjacent sound that is seen from Terminal Spirit Disease onwards.

One thing to note for this album is that despite being labeled a melodic death metal album, it is very different from most examples within the genre, even titans like Intestine Baalism. This is due to their sound being closer to an old school death metal/black metal with technical and unorthodox melodies/riffs/ideas being thrown in that further distorts and mutates the album into its own amalgamated, grotesque creation (in a good way), to the point that I would describe this as "proto-Demilich" (gross overstatement, I know), plus violins.

The instruments here seem wildly disorganized, but each note here is deliberate, which is only apparent after a lot of listens. Ranging from the odd harmony of the guitars, the misplaced and weirdly paced drums, and the violins that seemingly weave in and out of the songs. While most bands with a violinist tend to use it for more melody and harmony, what the violinist does here instead is making the songs more uneasy, more out of place by playing haunting and sorrowful melodies, making the album sound even more schizophrenic and eerie. The vocals here are excellent too, unlike SOTS era Tomas who sounds like his vocals are completely fried, his vocals here sounds possessed and genuinely haunting, like it was coming from a mental patient suffering from schizophrenia and claustrophobia while self-harming, which gave this album an even more dissonant feeling because melodeath vocals are not supposed to sound like this and work, this is closer to something like a DSBM vocalist like Nattramn or Kim Carlsson. This album also has audible bass, so that is a plus, although it is hard to listen to the bass under all the cacophony.

In regards to production, this is one of the examples where the production is deliberately bad in a way that's more piercing to give the album a more abrasive and confrontational sound, similar to Obscura by Gorguts. It works here but it is something that is genuinely hard to get right, more often than not it is done right by accident. But even with the bad production, the guitars sound really filthy and swampy, closer to something like a death/doom guitar, and it also has a neat side effect in giving Tomas' vocals an ethereal and echo-y sound which contributes to how out of place it sounds.

Songwriting wise, Alf Svensson gave this album a more progressive direction by rapidly changing song structures and giving them long song lengths, sometimes the dissonance can make the songs feel longer even when they are objectively short, and sometimes straightforward melodies are used to contrast said dissonant sections to make them stand out more. Some fragments of melodies from SOTS do show up here, but instead of being used in a circular way (aka repeat itself until song ends), it is used in progressive and somewhat avant-garde ways to progress the song or instill cacophony and unease into the listener.

This album is just weird, breaking genre conventions even if you classify them as regular death metal, a sound full of schizophrenia and psychopathy instead of the brutality and anger we should expect from anything death metal adjacent. If you want to start familiarize yourself with dissonant death metal (or just wanting to hear what melodic death metal began as, yes this predates Heartwork), pick this album up, you will not be disappointed. Also their old logo here looks infinitely better than the logo they decided to use from "With Fear..." onwards.

Highlights: Through Gardens of Grief, Red in The Sky, City of Screaming Statues

“The Red In The Sky Is Ours” was more structured than “Gardens Of Grief”, yet was still an experimental record in some respects. When we recorded it, we had been together for just a year. The production is weird and very weak, Kerrang! Magazine described it the best: “The guitars sound like wet cucumbers”. In terms of songwriting, we began getting to know each other musically. This was despite the fact I felt some of Alf's ideas were over the top, and that it was very strange music. What you hear on the album is “Alf Light”. I can't really remember our specific thoughts, or strategies at that time. Sometimes, though, I think we tried too hard to impress people with too many riffs and weird songwriting.

-Anders Björler, 2007 (“The Flames of the End”? - Guitarist Anders Björler wishes to pen the final chapter in the glorious history of Swedish legends At the Gates).

The first couple of months of rehearsing was surrounded by a very creative atmosphere. We tried all new ideas with open minds. Everything was possible. Since Alf was older than us and had the most extreme and twisted ideas, we felt there was total creative freedom.

-Tomas Linderg, 2010 (Under a Serpent Sun: The Story of At the Gates).

I must admit that I’ve struggled with the task of elaborating this review for quite some time. Not solely due to my lack of expertise in the field of writing about music, but also because of the complexity and eccentricities the album in question presents, as well as the mood that conveys and the feelings/impressions that manages to cause the listener. I’ve stumbled upon reviews and comments that described it as "a descent into madness and chaos", referring to its desperate and gloomy ambience. This isn’t the typical Swedish death metal effort, neither death metal in general, and dare I say metal as a whole, and it can be difficult to explain its features through mere text.

Despite existing more technical and/or “avant-garde” extreme bands (e.g. Atheist, Cynic, Gorguts, The Chasm, Demilich or Ved Buens Ende), “The Red in the Sky is Ours” still accomplishes to stand aside. What we have here is a unique piece that, nearly 30 years after its publishing, hasn’t been emulated by other acts (thankfully!).

Now, concerning Anders’ words, I have to say he’s right – but only partially so. I state this because the group indeed crafted a one-of-a-kind work, yet not in the way he claims, as if the rarities to be found here implied negative connotations, when in reality is just the opposite. Said oddities mark the difference. He evidently deserves recognition too, for he’s credited as a composer in multiple tracks, but in all honesty, his expressions seem like an attempt to discredit the major responsible for this opus.

As asserted in the quotes, Svensson’s influence predominates in the more ambitious songs, which includes a wide array of influences that not only come from death and black metal, but also Swedish folk music. His unique perspective delves into intense, progressive, experimental and non-linear structures, almost antithetical of the simple and straight-forward approach adopted after his departure. If you heard Grotesque's EP "Incantation", you know what you’re in for: lots of phenomenal riffs and lead sections, although with fewer solos. The essence of the guitar work resides in the contrasting, polyphonic melodies, in addition to the recurrent tempo changes – surely a product of his unorthodox technique of reversing tapes and trying to mimic with his guitar what was being played.

Jonas Björler’s bass replicates most of what the guitars are playing with tight accuracy, but also shines through in certain brief moments (for example, in “Claws of Laughter Dead”, “Neverwhere” or “City of Screaming Statues”).

Adrian Erlandsson’s drumming characterizes for being precise, efficient and sober. If I had to compare his style to another drummer’s within the genre, that’d be Ken Owen. Unlike others, they don’t blast and throw fills mindlessly throughout the song for the sake of it – instead, they proceed to do it when it’s needed in order to emphasize certain sections and/or to catch the listener off-guard. The album opener, as well as “Within” or the aforementioned “Claws of Laughter Dead”, “Neverwhere” and “City of Screaming Statues” are fine examples of his outstanding performance.

Tomas Lindberg is no slouch. Albeit I consider he improved significantly by the band’s third and fourth endeavor, here he delivers high-pitched, heart-rending vocals that go hand-in-hand with the dark, nihilistic and introspective lyrics. Check the tortuous screams in the beginning of the first, second, fourth and seventh track, just to mention a few.

The review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Jesper Jarold’s concise yet crucial contributions. The violin lines definitely incorporate distinction and variety, and its tendency to appear unforeseeably and sporadically reinforces its impact.

The only aspect one could, in the slightest, perceive as a weakness, actually benefits the record’s lugubrious atmosphere. The production, which does in fact sound considerably weak and thin (take, for instance, the muddy guitar tone, the fragile drums and the overall discreet bass), implies a step-back from “Gardens of Grief”. Nonetheless, it’s one of the key factors in achieving such a peculiar sound, to the point I wouldn’t imagine it with a different mix.

In fine, this is the absolute and premature pinnacle of At the Gates career and, as such, constitutes one of the greatest death metal releases of all time and a mandatory listening experience to anyone that deems themselves as a connoisseur of the genre. Several tries might be required, but it’ll be well worth it. I suggest you to listen to it while laying on bed, with your eyes closed and the lights off.

Favorite tracks: all of them are extraordinary, but my selection includes “Kingdom Gone”, “Within”, “Neverwhere”, “Through Gardens of Grief”, “Windows”.

While going through melodic death metal essentials, which is a genre I'm alien to, I came across this album. Seeing its rating on this site, I built some extremely high expectations for it. Seemingly, a powerful, emotional record, released as death metal was approaching its commercial peak, and was culturally at its zenith. From the band that released "Slaughter of the Soul."

Some four minutes later, as the violin mesmerizingly played away its notes in "The Season to Come," I was at the peak of my disappointment. But surely, the rest of the album couldn't be like this, right? Right? No, this first track was just some bunch of random "melodies" tremolo'ed away, accompanied with a cliche, shit drum beats and blasts, with a horrible mix and an extremely weak and sterile guitar tone. Kingdom Gone is going to be better, right? RIGHT?!

Five more minutes elapsed. And so was that, Kingdom fucking Gone. It was nothing different. After this, I came to the conclusion that this wasn't going to be any better. And I stopped paying attention afterwards. Just let it flow as the opening track's permutations vehemently attacked my ears.

As I said, this album was released during the cultural peak of death metal, and was very crucial to the development of what we know today as melodic death. While I'm a fresh fan of the genre myself, I can say that this seed of it that was yet to grow into a full plant is unfortunately nothing more than subpar death metal, with some technical gimmicks and progressive song structure elements. However, I'm very glad they took this sound and made it a million times more meaningful, and overall better, with their second album "With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness."

Instrumentally, it's "eh." My description of the opening track describes the riffing and the drumming well enough. While everything is played competently, the writing is a disaster. The formula they had for this album really did have great potential, but they just didn't do a good job in the writing of the supposed melodies. It sounds more like a compilation of dissonant, random guitar playing accompanied with drums blasting to hell, rather than some actual meaningful, powerful music. The violin and the vocals are the real highlight here. The vocals are good, and get better with the following albums, not much to say about those. But the violin. Instruments other than the classic guitar-drum-bass trio are very rare in metal, and violin was something never seen in metal before at the time this album was released. The revolutionary usage of the violin here makes everything better. I just wish it was more prevalent.

I often talk about the otherwise notable songs of the album after going over the instruments, but there's not much to talk about here. If anything, it's quite repetitive, a problem much more prevalent in the group's later albums. The opening track is weak, the violin solo that follows is a breath of fresh air, then everything that comes after is the same. The prevalence of the violin in "Through Gardens of Grief" and "Windows," and the overall musicality of those songs makes them stand out though. After those tracks though, it's, as I said, more of the same. It ends unimpressively with "Night Comes, Blood Black."

Overall, just skip to "With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness." This album isn't worth your time.

Highlights: Through Gardens of Grief & Windows.

It just so happens that of all At The Gates albums, I like to return to the debut album "The Red In The Sky Is Ours" most often. I am aware that on the next albums the Swedes gained more popularity and "influence" (especially due to "Slaughter Of The Soul"), but what can I do? That's my taste in music. The effect turned out to be really amazing.

On "The Red..." we get a very unusual and unconventional death metal, different from what bands like In Flames or Dark Tranquility played on their first albums! At The Gates just stood out perfectly; on the one hand, they served music clearly stronger than the "competition" from the local scene, on the other hand, they could come into an atmospheric violin playing or serve some more progressive/technical patterns close to...Atheist! In the music itself - fortunately - you don't feel as much stylistic as my description might suggest.

You can find here a lot of classically good death metal ("Kingdom Gone", "Through Gardens Of Grief", "City Of Screaming Statues", the title song, "Claws Of Laughter Dead"), in similar amounts slower patterns (also the tracks above I mentioned), but also with progressive inserts (eg. in "Neverwhere", "Night Comes, Blood Black"). I mentioned the violin, and yes, it plays quite an important role on the album (guest recording by Jesper Jarold). In such songs as "Within", "Windows" or "Neverwhere" you can perfectly hear how At The Gates was able to operate them efficiently in their playing (the only weaker moment here is "The Season To Come" - but you can still get over it), almost like another guitar (there are even solos).

You do not have to look far for other advantages. Tomas' vocal (probably the most "possessed" that appeared on At The Gates albums), great guitar riffs, expressive basses or interesting drumming by Adrian Erlandsson are noteworthy here. So I think that "The Red In The Sky Is Ours" should also appeal to those who do not deal with At The Gates or generally Swedish melo death. On their debut, however, it is "something".

Originally on: https://subiektywnymetal.blogspot.com/2019/08/at-gates-red-in-sky-is-ours-1992.html

When discussing The Red in the Sky is Ours, I feel that the majority of people either completely love or hate it; either describing it as a Swedish death metal classic that is one of a kind or a disorganized and pretentious effort. I’m tempted to go with the latter here, but only partially so - At The Gates were certainly creative at this point in their career, but their debut certainly doesn’t rank up there with the Swedish death metal classics (Left Hand Path being the crown jewel of them all as far as I'm concerned).

Obviously, the real brilliance of The Red in the Sky is Ours has to do with Alf Svensson. His guitar playing is very flexible; allowing high-flying riffs to appear by surprise (sometimes harmonized, but this is seldom happening), yet unlike Liers in Wait compositions are still highly memorable and surprisingly emotionally intense despite their unorthodox nature. The fastest sections feeling claustrophobic; quickly notable on the title track with its second riff being a played back variant of the opening and once the emphasis lies on a repeated riff pattern, a strange aura of melancholy evokes - presented by weepy tremolo attack of ‘’Windows’’ or the final stage of ‘’Within’’, where a violin passage joins for dramatic effects. Indeed, The Red in the Sky is Ours has deals more with psychological suspense than brute force and if that wasn’t enough yet, Tomas Lindberg’s vocals are contributive in the best way possible; dramatic shrieks howl through these labyrinthine compositions that resemble a man who has been taken prisoner and will be until the end of times. Certainly, this album is undeniably ambitious and twisted it could drain one mentally thanks to the emotional baggage it carries along.

But does The Red in the Sky is Ours ever become too ambitious for its own good? To a certain degree it does. Allowing the violins to completely take over on the second half of the title track while the guitars vanish into oblivion certainly isn’t an advantage and ‘’Night Comes, Blood Back’’ just misses the mark as it moves too rapidly from one segment to another, preventing anything to really stick. Then there are the violins, which truth to be told, I’m not even that fond of either. Often they hover around briefly; on the faster bits rather chaotic and pointlessly, while on the slower passages slightly more efficiently. The aforementioned ending of ‘’Within’’ is a great example as it allows the violins to match the slower, dramatic waves of riffs without a rush.

Even if The Red in the Sky is Ours features a so-so opener and ends on a weak note, the numbers that appear in between are all pretty enjoyable – ‘’Within’’ being my absolutely favorite. Given its length, it expresses itself slightly more as an epic number than anything else; firstly opening up with a sinister crawling passage that recalls a black widow preparing her web to trap its prey before the voyage into madness begins. Indeed, what follows after is an emotional roller-coaster of dour riffing, tormented cries so powerful you can’t get around them anymore and an acrobatic drum performance; all complementing each other in the best way possible during the countless amount of tempo changes.

I’d have liked to see At The Gates improve themselves as time went on, but sadly that was not to be. With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness would be the last album to feature Alf Svensson but already lacked in certain areas and the later records of this band are just something very different. While The Red in the Sky is Ours is no classic in my book, it is nonetheless an interesting piece of work that’s very much worth checking out. Just beware...this is not for the faint hearted.

Death metal isn't often thought of as a particularly melody driven form of music compared to say, black metal and even with the emergence of "melodic death metal" that didn't change very much. After all, its most famous progenitors were typically American bands who had savagery and sometimes even dissonance in shades but even the relatively less influential Swedish bands, melody was mostly something used to smooth out the edges here and there or occasionally add colour to dense punky bludgeoning. However that would rapidly change in the early 90's as bands as varied as Dark Tranquillity, Phantasm, Atheist, Darkthrone, Carbonized, Timeghoul, Traumatic Voyage, Afflicted, Funcunt, Septic Flesh and others saw fertile new grounds in a genre that had *just* solidified its foundations but hadn't fully codified its norms. Not too long ago, a certain Grotesque had also come to an end and from two of its former members plus a few new musicians would emerge At The Gates.

Picking up where they left off a year ago with Gardens of Grief (which itself continued what was heard on Grotesque's Incantation in 1990... or well, the first three songs on that EP), At The Gates decided to vary up their approach to structure considerably and moved away from more straightforwardly narrative stacking of riffs-after-riffs into a more chaotic and conflicted approach that mirrored to an extent the American death metal of their time. Yet just like on that EP a wide range of harmony, melody, and tonal colour still defined these multifaceted compositions albeit now in far more unusually asymmetrical structures that were considerably harder to follow. The musician improved further to follow this new and highly demanding sound, bearing some parallels to works such as Afterlife's Surreality and Eternal Dirge's Morbus Ascendit in its combination of melody and technicality but with a comparatively far wider tonal palette and less emphasis on raw tenacity or the performance of each musician. In doing so it emphasizes a heavy degree of contrapuntal arrangement broken up by a maze-like structural dialogue of repeated themes clashing in new and and harsh ways, breaking forth at key junctions to allow for new themes to emerge and blossom and in doing so, fill in different chapters of an overarching story connected through individual riffs functioning like conflicting and uniting characters that gradually make sense of how both its melodic and tonal ideas work as a whole.

Although the pacing isn't as fast or as frenzied as say, Liers in Wait (which featured three member of At The Gates), the songs can feel nearly as jam packed not necessarily due to having a similar number of riffs (seriously Spiritually Uncontrolled Art has enough riffs to fill up four albums at the least) as much as the constant changing of tempos, riffs, and tonalities present. It seems almost at odds with the moments of sublime beauty in these lengthier exchanges between both songs and the desolate, pained cries of the vocals. In spite of that there's a kind of order that emerges from this self-consuming, fragmenting chaos that's a distinct part of early 90's death metal where what feels like an armed conflict between all these constituent elements makes every riff feel a little more valuable as it is violently overtaken by another only to reappear later, its message and effect changed by new positioning and subsequently, a different part of the structural puzzle revealed and explained. While it is increasingly seen moreso nowadays as an earlier example of melodic death metal (and rightfully so), the band are not afraid to experiment with much less consonant moments almost like some sort of modernist classical inspired nightmare, wedding pure horror and paranoia to melancholy and almost yearning desire. This is a very gloomy album, as gloomy as something like Adramelch's Irae Melanox or Void of Silence's The Sky Over but it is violently tragic in how it explores this whether in its deeply pessimistic lyricism or its harmony-driven cruelties.

Even the production adds to this atmosphere; it sounds kind of diminutive and distant but only because it's a mournful voice trapped in a massive, empty mansion where everything feels so much more distant and aged as if viewed as a lost child wandering where they really shouldn't. Still, I do wish it had a production closer to Gardens of Grief if only because that one was equally evocative while still letting every instrument be heard easily save for the snare drum during many of the blast sections (something this album thankfully didn't suffer for). Personally, I know rougher production jobs aren't for many people but for me, the enjoyment of a lot of early 90's death metal classics benefits from that kind of free for all approach where a production job can be "wrong" on paper yet give a release a kind of wild, strange, and entrancing character you won't get even with the upgrades to analog style production modern times have brought.

This isn't a very easy album to get into regardless; I was lucky I realized that it was basically an album to listen to for the polyphony first and then it immediately made sense to me, allowing me to figure out the structuring later. Still even if you are aware of that, it ignores a lot of the more accessible tropes that occasionally popped into a lot of death metal of its time. There's no FUCK YEAH HEADBANGING TIME 666 segments, no mosh friendly sections, no syncopated crunchy marching parts, no parts where they just "let loose" - everything here is anti-fun (thankfully) but it is also mystifying in its depressive atmosphere and its untamed idiosyncrasy. There's not a lot of albums like it (unsurprising given how difficult it would be to replicate a similar idea even with today's tech wizards) but that only makes it stand out more in a genre that today is as much proudly delving into the pure chaos of its past and boldly exploring the various newly opened frontiers of an emergent future. An album to cherish for all times.

The Red in the Sky is Ours, in my humble opinion, is possibly the greatest metal album of all time. I truly mean this. I have listened to metal for over 15 years, and this album has remained my number one since I first listened to it 10 years ago. After waiting for so long, I decided to write a review for it, in order to argue why it can be considered as the GOAT of heavy metal.

This album pushes all aspects of metal music to its limits, and somewhat ironically, transcends the genre itself by doing so. The music in this album is so extreme in terms of the dissonance, tempo changes, and song structures, that it barely resembles any traditional heavy metal music. For instance, besides a few key notes, The Red in the Sky is Ours has few similarities with Black Sabbath, the creators of the metal genre. Yes, this album does contain riffs, which is a defining feature of the metal genre, but they are just a backdrop of the music, rarely emphasized. Compare that to this album’s closest relatives, like the early works of Entombed and Dismember, who not only promote riffs but glorify them.

Nonetheless, The Red in the Sky is Ours remains loyal to metal. Every sound is created by the fundamentals of extreme metal: heavily distorted guitars, a bass, fast drums, and harsh vocals. The Red in the Sky is Ours, in this sense, embodies the purest form of metal. This may seem like a trivial point, but it is one of the primary factors that makes this album so unique. With traditional metal instruments alone, it succeeds in becoming abrasive, extreme, and abnormal. There are no gimmicks, no special atmospheres, avante-garde effects, or unique instruments (besides an occasional violin, but more on that later). There are no stylistic gimmicks either, such as the fusion of different genres. Even the production, being treble-heavy, emphasizes the instruments rather than obfuscating them. You can hear the raw talent in every note produced by each musician. Guitarists Anders Bjorler and Alf Svensson play mind blowing riffs made of lightning-speed tremolo picking, sometimes finding harmony, sometimes eerily diverging into polyphonic sounds. Then, there is bassist Jonas Bjorler, who infuses elements of jazz into the mix with his groovy bass lines, sometimes even taking control of the riffs himself. Drummer Adrian Erlandsson plays with god-like technique and taste, using blast-beats sparingly while relying more on his creativity. And of course, vocalist Tomas Lindberg unleashes unrivaled passion and energy, sounding somewhere between death metal growls and black metal shrieks. Overall, The Red in the Sky is Ours rests on each member’s creativity in the forms of aggression, technical skills, and songwriting.

Having said all that, I think one musician in particular played a far greater role than the others: Alf Svensson. Anders Bjorler claimed that it was Svensson who brought the “over the top” and “strange” guitarwork into the album. Perhaps the contrasting styles of the two guitarists could explain why the album was able to find such balance between melody and dissonance. It’s also no wonder the band devolved as soon as Svensson left. So I think it’s important to give credit to Svensson, who arguably made the most significant contributions to this album.

The album, however, isn’t just the sum of its parts. As a whole, it’s something much greater, with a narrative and purpose. The Red in the Sky is Ours’ release is an act of moving as far from the conventional, “acceptable” forms of music as possible. As a result, it symbolizes a form of anarchy, resisting capitalist consumerism. It is the metal community’s best answer to the corporate music industry. Even compared to its extreme metal brethren, The Red in the Sky is Ours is alien, abrasive, dissonant, and chaotic. Take the title track, for example, which opens with some of the most bizarre riffs metal has ever heard, even to this day. There are also strong elements of progressive death metal, perhaps most resembling Atheist, but with far less pandering to the typical metalhead, let alone the average music listener. The shock continues as the track unleashes a flurry of dissonant riffs, ceaselessly jarring the listener, until finishing with the violin piece. Even the violin syncs with the purpose of the album. It sounds eerie, bleak, and maybe a little “off.” It’s a reminder that even an instrument as “graceful” as the violin, a classical instrument meant for pleasant sounds, is not sacred. The violin’s introduction at the end of the title track also serves as a foreshadow of what is to come. As such, it’s less of a gimmick and more as an icon.

The narrative of the album is my favorite part of it. It follows no formulas, whether it is traditional verse-chorus-verse forms or just churning an endless assembly line of riffs. Instead, the riffs evolve and build on themes that carry over into later tracks. The mid-album trio consisting of Windows, Claws of Laughter Dead, and Neverwhere are a good example of that how some of the major themes develop. The transitions between these three tracks are so seamless that they feel like a single continuous track, creating a level of immersion only a classical symphony could produce. In the larger context, this trio represents a rise in tension, leading to a climax. Take the riffs in Windows, for example, which are tight, tremolo-packed, and melodic. Before the tension is released, a new act takes over in Claws of Laughter Dead, which is even more packed with epic riffs, pushing the album into an even more claustrophobic space. Again, this track ends without ever releasing the tension, and without even a warning. That’s when Neverwhere begins, which consists of some of the most genius riffing in the entire album. Suddenly, the disorienting tempo-changes and unpredictable progressions are united with the highly melodic sections of past tracks. Even the violin finds its way in. Lindberg screams, “Life doesn’t belong here!” as if acknowledging the album’s nihilistic deconstruction of everything that was released before it.

We enter Neverwhere. Or, perhaps, we are trapped in it.

To me, Neverwhere is the heart of the album, because it’s the climax of the story of The Red in the Sky is Ours. It offers a strange sense of self-aware nihilism, revealing how this moment was destined to occur. It should not come as a surprise that Svensson wrote the lyrics to this track. Maybe he is offering some insight into the story:

“Now awaited, the circle to close
We wait for the call - Lazaraus come out
We wait in the shadows of Neverwhere”

After Neverwhere ends, the album moves into the resolution. The Scar is a beautiful moment of self-reflection, especially in the aftermath of Neverwhere. It is one of those perfectly placed breathers that balances the intensity of the chaos at just the right time.

At The Gates could have ended the album right there. But, come on. This is The Red in the Sky is Ours. There’s nothing predictable about this album. The onslaught brought forth by Night Comes, Blood Black and City of Screaming Statues remind me of Neverwhere, as if I was trapped inside a nightmare within a nightmare all along. Resolution doesn’t really “resolve” anything. The night still comes, and the city’s statues are scream.

This brings me to an important point I make earlier. The Red in the Sky is Ours is an album that is metal in style, but something more in substance. It feels as though the boundaries of metal are blurred, as At the Gates consistently ignore (or neglect) all genre traditions. If anything, it feels more like a symphony, reminding me of classical composers such as Beethoven and Shostakovich. Even in the design of the melodies, and the way tremolo picking is utilized, a sense of grandness is invoked. The way those melodies are blended with the chaos, too, is unparalleled. It’s how melodic death metal should be, unlike the later melodeath scene saturated with trite formulas.

To conclude, The Red in the Sky is Ours is a revolutionary album. As of 2019, it has been nearly 30 years since it was released, and I haven’t listened to an album as challenging and satisfying as this one. If I listen to something better, I guarantee I will resubmit this review with a different score. But until then, 100% it is.

I used to stretch my brain as far as I could to try and imagine, even in the vaguest sense, what a "perfect" metal album would sound like. I did this off and on ever since I started listening to metal. It was normally an exercise in futility. When I first listened to this album, it actually confused me. As naive as I was, it seemed to impress me in a way that I couldn't digest. But even with such indigestion, I never stopped listening to the most infectious tracks, which for me were "Within" and "Neverwhere". It didn't take much aging for me to fully grasp how incredible this album was, and I only owe the perplexion to having not heard anything of the like at the time, other than early In Flames and Sacramentum.

The whole concept of melodeath is lost on many people. I believe this is because some of its progenitors, and much of its mimicry, had a common denominator of dry, uninspired scale-mongering. Not that this approach always had mediocre results, but more often than not, it seems to. This release takes that concept, and amalgamates melody and harmony with dissonance and free-form chaotic expression.

I chose to mention "Within" because, out of all the tracks, it seems to be the most well orchestrated, as well as the most raw and unforgiving whirlwind of terror that could ever befall your ears. All the parts tell a story untold, until your most wicked imagination tells the story for you. Every revisit to that song introduces me to parts of my psyche I had recently overlooked.

"Neverwhere" stood out to me due to the unrelentingly cold riff patterns. It seems to me that when people try as hard as they can to reach the next extreme of extreme music, they fail to notice that there is still uncharted terrain in Western scales and ways to manipulate them with typical rock instruments. Metal seems to get more diverse all the time, but such disturbingly menacing riffs get less common as it diversifies.

The entire album is a journey that you get something out of every time you listen to it, and I will always consider this the definitive metal album that is equally as crushing as it is mellifluous. An album that uses the buzzsaw tone to its full potential. If you've heard bands like In Flames, Soilwork, Opeth, and even bands like Necrophagist, Obscura, and Beyond Creation, but have yet to hear this album, you have truly "missed the point," and need to hear how torrential and maddening death metal's more eloquent side can get.

When I was starting to get into melodic death metal at first, I practically looked up some good bands. At The Gates was a band that kept popping up, so finally I decided to check them out. Terminal Spirit Disease is arguably the album that got me into melodic death metal. I loved this bands music but had never gone back and listened to this, their debut. So I finally decided to. And to be frankly honest with you, I absolutely HATED it. I thought the music was unorganized, bad, and Tomas Lindberg sounded worse than ever. Finally about a month ago, I decided it was time that I should listen to some old At The Gates. By this point, I was much better acquainted with the genre, and by this point, I was liking a lot more death metal than before. I played the first song, the title track, and was absolutely blown away. It WAS absolutely terrible organized, and I DID think Lindberg sounded like shit. However, this is what I've come to love about this album and the music on it.

I have found only one word fit to describe this album: absolute total chaos. This album is chaotic in every sense, and when I say that I mean it is PHENOMENALLY chaotic. No, it isn't like Slaughter Of The Soul, where every take of every instrument is perfectly mixed, and every take is absolutely perfect. That is where this album differs, this is At The Gates minus the OCD of their later releases. While I do love an album like Slaughter, I find this album to be more brutal take and here's why: The disorganization, and overall youth of the musicians. They couldn't produce a good, perfect album. With their later work, they were doing simple guitar solos, Slayer style riffs on the guitars rhythm parts, and simplicity. Still good, but very simple. This album is not a simple take on melodic death metal, it is anything but that. Violins pop in out of nowhere, and while they seem useless and out of tune upon first listen, they add to the heaviness and overall somberness of this album. Influences not even from metal but from classical music, in particular from Dimitri Shostakovitch's fifth symphony, appear on the guitar solo to the song Kingdom Gone (which is a pretty fucking amazing song by the way). All this craziness is what makes me say "wow" after listening to it every time.

To compare this album with other melodic death metal, this album would be hard to equal. Probably the only comparable album would be, In Flames' Lunar Strain. Both these albums showcase all of these bands trying to find their footing, trying to impress with complicated riffs, and never using the same riff more than 2 times in a song. Basically, they all throw tons of riffs into 1 song, and still manage to have it be a song. But this album, still stands above all the other album for me, because of the pure chaos which is not really as prevalent on the other album, and the overall power this manages to convey. The guitars on this album also sound really different, compared to the Peavey 5150s used on In Flames' Lunar Strain. This is a weird, really fucking weird album, however, it is that weirdness that makes it the best. Standout tracks are the title opener, Kingdom Gone, and Neverwhere. My only 1 complaint with this album is with the mix, where the bass guitar is relatively trebley, making it more difficult to hear along with the guitars, and not adding as much low end power as I would like in such a song as "Kingdom Gone," where they throw in loads of power and bass live.

Prepare yourself, this isn't the watered down filler fest that is the overpraised Slaughter of the Soul. But this-- this is true melodic death metal hailing from Sweden. Combining melodic tremolo picking from hell, mixed with a healthy dosing of complex song structures and then followed by godly drumming with just a dash of sloppy vocals of torment and despair and you get what is one of death metals most overwhelmingly complex and finest offerings (with a a slight violin aftertaste).

Tomas Lindberg supplies the vocals on this record and summons the souls of the tortured to lead a hand. Lindberg's vocals is truly devious, sounding like he is in constant pain while getting his jugular ripped out over and over again. It's a great effect for the album and his sloppy demented screams fill your ears with constant pleasure. The title track has a great opening scream that really shows Lindberg's might and power has a vocalist. "Claws of Laughter Dead" is another great display of this vocals with some great screams and vocal lines that will haunt any of those listening. Another track with some great singing is the monstrous "Kingdom Gone". This track has a powerful chorus and opening that sucks you right into the intensity of the music. Lindberg was a masterful singer at this period in his career and his voice on this album is superb. Sadly, he wouldn't keep this style long, but be glad it was shown on at least a proper album.

Guitarists Anders Björler and Alf Svensson do an amazing job on this album creating complex and progressive death metal through the extensive use of tremolo picking. Every song is roughly 99% tremolo picking and surprisingly, they are able to keep it interesting and fresh. Track like "Windows" and "Neverwhere" show their ability to do so. Other tracks like the intro to "Within" and "Night Comes, Blood Black" show the most different riffing variations with influences of doom (Within) and thrash (Night Comes, Blood Black). The guitar playing is very complex with tracks like "Within", "Claws of Laughter Dead", and "Neverwhere" that show a progressive side that I really adore. The duel guitars also play competing melodies at times, like on "Windows" and "The Scar" which make the depth of the album even deeper. Guitar solos are pretty absent on this album except the track "Claws of Laughter Dead" which in actuality is a rather weak solo but then again it doesn't really bother me now after hearing it so much. "The Scar" is radically different from the rest of the tracks featuring only clean guitar and whispered vocals. This is a great track that really sets the mood for the following track. Overall the guitar work is very good, full of interesting riffs and song structures that are backed by a killer tone that makes this album really great.

The bass work on this album is also very good. Jonas Björler has some nice diminished bass breaks on tracks such as "Kingdom Gone" and "Claws of Laughter Dead" that drive the overwhelming music to even further limits. The bass follows the tremolo picking fest that is brought by the guitar and can be heard strumming fiercely on "Within". The tone is rather good and very clean which is refreshing to hear when the bass peaks its head above the tormenting screams and pounding drums.

The real star of the show is Adrian Erlandsson on drums. This is hands down some of the best drumming in death metal. Erlandsson takes the conventional 'blast beating through the whole song' style of death metal and throws it out the window. Erlandsson does show off some blast beats but shows he can do so much more on tracks like "Through Gardens of Grief" and "Within". Other than complex beats and rhythms that makes this album so great, the fills are even more enticing. "Neverwhere" and "Claws of Laughter Dead" have amazing drum breaks that are so good you couldn't help but showing off your air drumming skills. The drum tone is very nice and clear for death metal that usually consists of horrid tones and production, but thankfully this album does not follow those stereotypes. Overall the drumming is phenomenal and shows Erlandsson's skill in the best fashion available.

Other than traditional death metal instruments there is also a healthy dose of violin present on this record. As heard on "The Red in the Sky Is Ours", "Through Gardens of Grief" and "Within" most prominently, the violin actually fits well within the tremolo picking filled music. The violin certainly gives the songs a more sophisticated feeling to the tracks when in reality, they are not. But none the less, the violin is a nice touch to the music and makes for some great "WTF IS THAT!?!?" moments for first time listeners.

In the end, this is At The Gates one and only masterpiece before slowly dumbing down their music down to conventional and acceptable standards. Made great with disgustingly amazing vocals, interesting tremolo picking and godly drumming this album deserves to be heard. Definitely check this album out for some great and complex melodic death metal, or if you're a fan of out of the ordinary death metal.

Ah, Sweden. A home to a wide array of extreme music sub genres. Some well recognized, other fairly overlooked. Everything from black metal to grindcore to crust punk has taken up residence there. But only one genre can call it home, and that is the double edged sword of melodic death metal. A genre that took extreme music into territories of effervescing grace and beauty, but also served as the template for the abomination known as metalcore. But this isn't the Iron Maiden worship found on albums like The Jester Race or Slaughter of the Soul. This is something much darker and foreboding. It's as if Entombed had a baby with early Norwegian black metal. The frantic structure, raw production, melodic interludes, and bleak atmosphere combine into a very strange and unique album.

Starting with the production. It sounds like a blend of what you'd hear on Leprosy, Soulside Journey, and Left Hand Path. Some tracks are very clear and cut through the mix (drums, vocals), while others get muffled underneath everything else (extra guitars, bass, violins), but this only enhances the quality of the album, as it adds to the overall atmosphere.

Tompa's vocals are raw as hell on this album, sounding more like Martin van Drunen than himself on the following albums. He uses a technique that sounds like a mix of yelling and shrieking, while being strangled. The guitar work is very strange. It almost borders on experimental on how it flows from chaotic and dissonant to melodic and graceful. The blend of death/thrash and black metal elements is almost dizzying. It's absolutely mind blowing how the band as a whole is able to hold down all the unconventional time signatures and tempo shifts. There's some sloppiness in Adrian's drumming, but on the whole his drumming works in the context of the album and adds to chaotic atmosphere. As I previously mentioned, the bass kind of takes a back seat, but still provides a nice bottom end to the whole.

The only drawback to this album is how some of the tracks blur together, but this is a small flaw as most of the album has enough variety to maintain my interest. If I had to pick standout songs I would choose Kingdom Gone, Within, Windows, Neverwhere, and The Scar. Kingdom Gone is a prime example of how blackened death metal should sound. Raw, gritty, and frantic, not overproduced and bland like newer Behemoth. Within is a ballad of a journey through the human psyche, starting off slow and ominous and picking up tempo with chaotic blast beats and frantic tremolo riffs and a few melodic touches towards the end. Windows has a very melodic intro, and then drops into straight death metal with some melodic fills throughout. Neverwhere is my all time favorite At the Gates track. All change ups are insane and are fairly memorable. The Scar is the most unique song, being devoid of any bass and drums, and instead of yelling/shrieking, Lindberg whispers the lyrics.

If you like death metal and early black metal, then this will definitely be your cup of tea. With elements from albums like Human, Leprosy, Left Hand Path, Clandestine, and Deathcrush, this is sure to please any old school fan.

At the Gates shouldn't need an introduction, pretty much any metal head knows this band and obviously a certain album they released in 1995. This here is the bands debut album, and arguably their finest. For my money I'd say The Red in the Sky is Ours is the bands finest, and here I'll explain why.

At first I actually dismissed this as budget Swedish death metal, but on further inspection I found this a lot more noteworthy than I had first imagined. For one this was 1992 and a lot of the Swedish death metal bands were just starting to find their feet and/or were crawling out of the woodwork. Whilst acts such as Necrophobic and Unanimated would come to do this style a lot better, for the time this was pretty damn cool and even original.

The inclusion of violins in places was a particularly interesting move, and really helped separate At the Gates from their peers. It also added a particularly creepy edge to the bands sprawling, twisting death metal. Their use of more melodic guitar harmonies worked particularly well too, and I'm sure acts as diverse as Edge of Sanity and Opeth would have took note, as well as some of the Swedish black metal acts.

Even the guitar riffs have a unique edge to them, and the album just generally boasts a cool obscure feel that was far away from what they would later become renowned for. Whilst the production is a little rough around the edges it adds more to the charm than anything, the guitar tone is punchy, and the drums sound natural, the bass sounds pretty good too. As for performances, I've mentioned the guitar work a couple of times, but its really well done. Anders and Alf definitely had something to say, and they said it in spades with their guitar work. Tomas Lindberg's vocals are also worthy of note, firmly routed in the Swedish school of shouting manical vocals as opposed to the US "cookie monster" style, Lindberg's vocals were exactly what the doctor ordered here.

Naming standouts isn't necessary, the album has a wonderful flow, as melodic as it is schizo, The Red in the Sky is Ours is a quality release and ultimately stands as At The Gates' finest. This is a mandatory addition to any Swedish death metal collection, and shows what the Gothenburg scene could have shaped up like given different circumstance.

This album is one of the first (if not, the first) melodic DM releases. Born from the ashes of Grotesque and Infestation, At the Gates went on to define the genre and inspired an entire scene, along with a slew of knockoffs. What they accomplished on this album is nothing short of legendary. From the chaotic opening track, through the melodic wonderland of "Windows" and beyond, this album is how melodic death metal should have stayed (sadly, it didn't).

What sets the album apart is the guitar work. Alf Svensson's ability to craft such elegant, yet evil melodies and riffs is unparalleled. Regrettably, the band was never quite the same after he left. The vocals aren't quite what one would expect from a death metal band. Lindberg's vocals on this album are more reminiscent of black metal vocals than in his later vocal performances. However, I find they fit perfectly with the material here. His wails add more desperation to the atmosphere. The drumming is quite good, however it is sloppy in some bits. The bass is barely audible except in a few bits of the songs (ie: "Within"). The violin definitely adds a nice touch to the songs in which it is featured.

The production overall is lacking, and according to an interview, the band thought so too at the time. But overall this album is the start of a whole new world of death metal. At the time, it was a completely new style and I would have loved to been able to appreciate it back then. TRITSIO still holds up extremely well and should be used as the standard by which all melodic death metal should be judged by on a musical level. its only issue is the production, but considering the level of high quality music, one can easily look past the flaw and view this album for what it truly is; a masterpiece.

Everything about this album blows me away every time I listen to it. Tomas Lindberg's tortured screams are some of the best metal vocals ever, nailing the perfect growling scream that is nearly impossible to imitate. The riffing on this album is all over the place and completely phenomenal. There are definitely some traditional "evil" melodic elements in the riffing, but the riffs break all the rules of traditional music and melody.

The riffing on this album is really what sets early ATG apart from every other melodic death metal band ever. They manage to weave melody that is incompatible with classical musical structures but still extremely pleasing to the ear into their music. They also manage to form those melodies in some of the most mournful ways possible. Listening to the guitar riffs alone can inspire a feeling of sorrow.

When one adds Tomas Lindberg's amazing screams to the mournful melodic riffing, the end result is a work of amazing pure evil atmosphere. The guitars and basses are of course down-tuned and heavy as possible throughout. The drums are fairly straightforward, and pretty much exist to offer a backdrop for the two duelling guitars.

The two guitars' working together create great effects on this album. Usually during slower melodic parts (for example, near the end of "Kingdom Gone") one guitar will play a low, heavy riff while the other plays a high harmonic variation on the same riff. The same goes for the main riffs played during the vocals throughout the album. Even if the guitars are playing in the same register, their parts are varied just enough to create amazing harmonies that sound great but can't be explained using traditional theory.

The album is very rhythmic and stays true to its heavy, death metal foundation, but ventures into an atmosphere of total darkness and evil, borrowing some early black metal elements and implementing them into the riffing. The album also features many great clean acoustic and violin breaks which fit perfectly into the overall atmosphere. Every song is unique and amazing in its own way. The album is incomparable to any other melodic death metal release. This is what melodic death metal should sound like.

This is one hell of a hard album to really describe, as I've really never heard anything like it. It could certainly be called "melodic death metal," but there sure as hell aren't any happy riffs here, or any of the catchy melodies that would characterize ATG's most renowned work. This definately leans more towards death metal, with a very strong doom vibe throughout and a definate touch of psychotic brutality.

Tempos range from fast to crawling, and I'd have to say that here ATG really shines when staying in the slower sections. Just the opening riff of "Within" twists around your neck and drags you down into the suffocating layers of the song. "Through Gardens of Grief" starts off with a grinding riff, then out come those nasty, strangling riffs, and a twisted violin melody at the end.

"Windows" is probably the closest that they come to sounding like their best known work, Slaughter of the Soul, but there is still quite that odd feeling to the riffing between Anders Bjorler and Alf Svensson. This isn't like Sacramentum's Far Away from the Sun, where the counterpoint riffing and unparallell harmonies created something strange and beautiful, these riffs just sound sick. Sure, a lot of times, the guitars grind away in a typical Slayer fashion, but when they don't...they give you a really uneasy feeling. It's as if they are taking the songs somewhere unknown, usually to the bowels of some Lovecraftian nightmare.

Whereas Tomas sounds possessed on here, and the guitar tone sort of wet and swampy, what really sounds strange on here is the violin. At times it provides a bizarre, floating melody, whereas on "The Season To Come," it is rather an afterthought.

This certainly is not an album for a casual fan, as it does demand repeated listens to full grasp what is going on. You're likely to wonder what just happened after listening to it the first time, and even on repeated listens its kind of hard to expereince in pieces. One thing can be sure: this is not the product of sane people.

More often than not, when someone hears the name At the Gates, the first thing they think of is "Slaughter of the Soul!!!!". So large was that album's impact on the current melodic death and metalcore scenes that it often seems the rest of the At The Gates discography is totally ignored. Thankfully, more seasoned metal fans recognize the brilliance of the works that came before.

When I first purchased "The Red in the Sky Is Ours" over a year ago, I was expecting a fairly controlled melodic death attack, not too far off from SotS, just a tad more complex and not as cleanly produced. What I received was a whirlwind of seemingly disorganized drumming,oddly harmonized but well composed guitar work, a powerful but harsh sounding production, and song structures that could change dramatically every 20 seconds. I was also surprised to hear a violin pop up every now and then. A nice touch, but definitely not what a person who had only heard Slaughter of the Soul would expect. Surprisingly, I was not immediately put off by this album, but instead intrigued. I listened many more times in attempt to understand the intricacies and beauty underneath a fairly oppressive surface.

Eventually, all the songs here began to make complete sense, despite all the rhythmic and thematic changes. Although I would typically find the random use of violins to be gimmicky, it is used so sparingly here, usually to accent one of the more controlled melodic sections, such as the ending of "Within". Still, one could see this as unnecessary.

What The Red in the Sky Is Ours gives us is a look at what melodic death metal should be. Make no mistake, the melodic qualities present on Slaughter of the Soul are also here, only constructed in a much more progressive (as opposed to circular) manner. Rhythmically, it is heavy enough to still be called death metal, as opposed to "Iron Maiden with laryngitis".

There are no real standout tracks, as nearly all songs except "The Scar" are in the same vein. My favorites include the concert favorite "Kingdom Gone", the melodic "Within" and "Windows", and the sheer ferocity of the closing track, "City of Screaming Statues".

So why not 100%? The musicianship, while very impressive overall, can sometimes be hit or miss as far as timing goes (such as a drum fill that goes on for a second too long), but as long as you don't have a metronome branded in your brain, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Some parts within songs just seem like they had more effort put into them than others. Some may find issue with the production, but as long as you're not obsessed with overglossed Killswitch Engage styled recording, it shouldn't be an issue. To the untrained ear, The Red in the Sky is Ours can also be off-putting, which may explain why this album (and its counterpart, the subsequent With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness) are mostly ignored.

If you are interested in hearing melodic death metal played the right way, progressive, complex, and heavy, I highly recommend this album as a starting point. An underrated classic without a doubt.

Upon hearing the first bits of The Red in the Sky is Ours, you know this album is going to completely annihilate your sorry ass. It's classic death metal, you listen to it and you know this wasn't a fluke of a band. Their albums got steadily less brutal, but were great releases on their own merit.

As for the songs on this album, what can I say? The title track just completely blew me away, and the violin parts just adds that odd contrast that many Swedish bands love to do (and I love to hear). The other songs that really stood out to me (which means, made me stop and look at the song number and name) were Kingdom Gone, Within (godly GODLY intro), and The Scar. The rest of the songs were very well made on their own right. Tomas' vocals are great, some of the best death metal vocals I've heard in a long time, and like said before, Jesper's violin is just great. Adrian's drumming is godly, they drive the songs on very well.

The digipack came with two live tracks and a demo, and those are worthwhile as well. Ever-Opening Flower was just great, and I had to keep listening to it because it just sounds amazing. If you hate the 'Gothenburg' scene, I guarantee you that this is an album for you, because it's death metal all the way.