At the Gates - Gardens of Grief

AT THE GATES - Gardens of Grief (HAMMERHEART - LP 2015)

"Gardens of Grief" is my favourite At the Gates recording. There's no other release from this band, which I would like so much. But this EP is really great and definitely belongs to the best early 90’s death metal materials from Sweden. I remember that I did have to take some time to convince myself to it, but once it all clicked, "Gardens...” blew my head off. Why such problems with getting into this music? Well, "Gardens of Grief" is not the typical Swedish death metal effort - if typical Swedish death metal means stuff from Entombed, Dismember, Unleashed or Grave. At the Gates went a different path and came up with their more complex song structures, unique and frequent tempo changes within every song and quite technical, almost thrashing riffs. Stylistically it really stands aside to everything! Of corpse there were some other more technical and bizarre sounding bands, like Afflicted, Carbonized, Therion for instance, even early In Flames... but At the Gates were living in their own weird world. 

"Gardens of Grief", unlike the future At the Gates material, isn't really so much melodic. It focuses more on twisted, sick, mindblowing riffs - just listen to what’s going on there, it is just fantastic cacophonous death metal, which can sound aggressive and vicious, dark and evil. And as such, it's just a natural follow up to Grotesque's final recording, which was "Incantation" MLP. Sure, there are some sort of melodic parts here and there, but their feeling is rather uncanny and eerie. Complex song structure and arrangements create a bit difficult and not easy music, it’s hard to memorize (check the song "At the Gates" especially). This is why I think it really requires time to get into all these. But it turns out that it's the strongest aspect of "Gardens of Grief" - that bizarre feel combined with truly dark, morbid aura. It just sounds awesome, I love all these broken rhythms, sonic attack from both guitarist and Tompa’s furious screams. I love how the band sounds here, how unique At the Gates were at the time of this EP. They had crazy ideas and enough freakin’ talent to transform them into killer music. 

All in all, these are some impressive and very important twenty minutes of death metal. For me it's the best At the Gates release. I got the recent vinyl version from Hammerheart and I have to say it's a solid reissue. I like that it's just one sided vinyl, so I don't have to flip sides after two songs. And the sound is damn good also! Very recommended if you don’t want to spend too much money on the old pressing. 

Standout track: "All Life Ends" 

Verdict: 95/100