I used to think of Leftism as a radical new idea that happened to be deceptive. Now I see it merely as a descent into incoherence that occurs whenever appealing to a broad social group becomes more important than accurately understanding the world.
As its career both revs up and dissolves in a lack of direction that has led the band to follow trends from ten years ago, At The Gates has made an attempt to create profundity aesthetically, or in other words like television advertisements and movies, sculpt imagery and sound that seem profound rather than having actual depth. This “attack by the surface” is a hallmark of modernity.
Early At the Gates achieved profundity by adopting a mood and developing it, allowing melodic guitar work in a death metal context to avoid being slaphappy speed metal silliness as it usually was at the time. New At the Gates wants to have people take them seriously, but it is not going so well.
At the Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg comments on the track as follows:
It is conceptually one of the cornerstones of the album. Driving home the point of the need for a war on apathy and the populistic forces that takes advantage of it. This is a fight against the abyss. A beacon for the importance of real art, real forms of expression, and importance of our understanding of our mutual cultural history.
This is word salad. We get that he adopted Kurt Cobain’s theory that our problem is “apathy,” which really is not a philosophy since it requires us to see the opposite of apathy as emotion or empathy, which is convenient for those who sell emotional day trips written into rock songs.
The rest, however, consists of one dogwhistle (populistic = bad) and then some popular terms like “mutual cultural history” which fits in with the emphasis on art and expression. In other words, this album is self-referential, but he is going to try to tap into the anti-Trump sentiment of a fearful Europe.
Is it any wonder that most bands end up at this point eventually? The years of inspiration are long gone, so now the songs are all surface and musical technique, without any artistic point. And yet albums must be sold, and so the “profundity” must be invented, which requires them to combine a mishmash of concepts and buzzwords and try to pass it off as something “new” to their credulous audience.
Notice how much of a you-are-so-deep sales job has been performed just by that excerpt from the statement of the vocalist. “Conceptually” weighs in as the third word, then he brings out his Big Concept phrase “war on apathy” and contrasts it with… well, what, really? “Real” art, expression, and globalism, apparently.
It is sad to see a mighty band fall so far. Then again, compared to what has happened to Sweden, this might rank as “mild” degradation, downfall, and degeneration.
Tags: apathy, At the Gates, empathy, populism
Isn’t populism a political appeal to previously ignored deeply held ideas among the broad masses? Apathy tends to be the response to generic politics and politicians – people who the general populace largely sees as a bunch of criminal faggots who have zero sense of personal responsibility or patriotism. If At the Gates were truly concerned, and not just after a payday as is most likely, they would be wise to look at why a populist like Trump won – a populace alienated and sickened by liberal elite politics and an increasingly Soviet-ized culture that thrust forward Caligulina Clinton, a lifelong apparatchik of the American nomenklatura, as the most ‘qualified’ candidate.
One finds something curious when one looks up the definition of abyss: “2. anything profound, unfathomable, or infinite”
With their continuing output of mediocre bullshit At the Gates is literally fighting against the profound, unfathomable, and infinite, and their efforts shall be met with apathy.
How the mighty have fallen.
They should write songs about their women, getting gang fucked by Alien invaders as they sit back and watch as any true cuck would, so their globalist overlords can flush their genes down the toilet of history.
This.
In Sweden, they are selling women’s jogging shorts with alarms to call the police built into them. This is hecause there are so many rapes that even with extra cops in the parks they still can’t kerp up.
Meanwhile, there are so many murders that they don’t even make headlines. And migrant rapes are being dismissed in court because the migrant doesn’t undermine the world know.
Musicians need to stop talking about politics- they are too dumb to think beyond what the MSM feeds them and end up just parroting whatever bullshit they hear
Speaking of word salads: Our tenured metal who speak from a position of wisdom suffer unfortunate cell division as we witness the first few waves of what could not have even been predicted and for millennia viewed as beyond arbitration evolve into unspeakable tragedy all day every day. Their contributions to the metal canon are above reproach so we’ll be more likely to forgive them in the end but must call them out in the interim. Virtue for musicians as well as entire bloodlines is akin to a man’s hairline in that for some it’s robust throughout life but in steady regression until almost bald for others (looking at you, Kerry), and perhaps like a reverse hairline when one does not even begin growing hair until age 30 (but by then beyond prime music composition ability). Brain cells are as unpredictable as everything else in life and almost everyone is a pile of shit at some point be it earlier or later.
Sidestepping landmines along the way, an unambiguous “yes” to the question: life? is the constant we must labor to transmit through these emotional episodes that are (much) more pronounced than ever before thanks to population+technology. Just because we have the ability to take a certain path doesn’t mean we should, and one should be particularly wary the more convenient or “too good to be true” a path is. In fact this is exactly the rub. Sure it’s possible to live on a six pack of soda, a bag of cheetos and a half gallon of ice cream per day; it’s cheap, quick, easy, perhaps delicious and even sustainable for awhile but doesn’t provide even the most basic elements for happy cells and long life and therefore not viable unless of course we can no longer agree on the definition of “tragedy” as it colludes with “no” to put the kibosh on “yes.” Elemental basic stuff really yet an ongoing dilemma for the human experiment.
Forgive them papi, for they are Swedish and do not know any better.
Y’know, for the explosion of great death metal (and some great black metal) in Sweden in the early 90s, the country has produced jack shit worth listening to in over 20 years. I went back through DMU’s best-of lists for 2008-2016 and only two releases (excluding reissues and compilations) on any of the lists were Swedish: Grave’s Endless Procession of Souls and Entrench’s Violent Procreation, both of which are B-minus tier at best. I remember liking Tribulation’s first album when I was a death metal neophyte but it hasn’t held up well.
Is there any worthy Swedish metal from the new millennium that I have somehow missed?
Nope, Sweden is lost
Marduk starting at Rom 5:12 is mostly solid, Ofermod’s “Tiamtu” and “Serpent’s Dance” are great, the new Malign EP is excellent (and surprising, given that band was previously a barely-disguised speed metal band) Watain’s first two albums are excellent (and, contrary to the dogma around here, so is the newest and in a decade everyone will regard it as such), and Funeral Mist’s “Salvation” is worthwhile.
Delet this
Matt Hardy will not delete this you peasant
Tompa is the perfect face of the band today: he sounds tired, worn out, and about as convincing as a 50 year old smoke-damaged pole dancer with 5 pounds of studio makeup barely concealing his flaws. Despite how painfully average AtG became by the Spiritually Transmitted Disease album, I never thought the members themselves would fall so far. Everyone else including Adrian and the new guy from God Macabre just phones it in. In fact they probably sent their session tracks directly to the Century Mediocre offices without ever rehearsing as a band.
The other new single contains a parody of “Primal Breath” at the very beginning. Figuring they already did their best to massacre “Raped by the Light of Christ,” it appears they deigned as well to poop on their best song.
You’re talking about “Shagger of Black Gays”, and that wannabe Alf Svensson opening riff, right?
The whole damn place is a bunch of shemales!
Kys
I hope someone on this site would be so kind to take my germanic candy ass for a humptastic night of dreams and passion.
The “real amateur written gay porn!” combines very nicely with the political posturing.
Rainer I´ll make good on that offer. I will take your candy ass for a ride of amateur heroic homo sex!
Brandon Geist and Banger TV are metal’s enemies.
Look, all that talk about populism or anti populism is retarded. Populism is of course retarded, like any political strategies to win people. What At The Gates does not understand is that saying that they are writing lyrics against apathy and for the respect of mutual cultural history of whatever the fuck IS itself populist. Populism is trying to appeal to the masses by mirroring their concerns and pretending to be 100% on their side regardless of the validity or triviality of those concerns. SJW pandering is exactly the same thing. What I do not understand is why is a Death Metal band writing about that? and what’s so deep about it? it’s like saying “hating people is bad, m’kay?” but instead of a goofy cartoon character, it’s a grown man who thinks he’s teaching people something profound. Why is this Death Metal? At The Gates has always sucked and I do not understand why people liked them in the first place, but now it’s just sad to see musicians in their age group releasing new music with sometimes decent artwork, but with inexplicably esoteric titles that have no real content and substandard musical compositions.
I don’t think those statements made in the interview are indicative of SJWism or even Marxist progressivism; more just a general appeal to the classical liberal ideas of the enlightenment and human brotherhood- which one can be nationalistic even and still believe in the classical liberal notion of internationalist cooperation and understanding the positive and begative aspects that all races and cultures share.
Though the attack on “populism” is somewhat concerning, but not neccaserily indicative of sjwism or Marxism per-se