At The Gates - Slaughter of the Soul (1995)

Death Metal time...At The Gates...hmmm. My head is all over the place right now, and At The Gates and Death are about the only things I can focus on right now....

So, if you like death metal, At the Gates will pretty much own you. Jeff hooked me up with this cuz I questioned about it, knowing that Converge were big At The Gates fans. He said it was pretty much his favorite and in the past few weeks it has become one of my most listened to albums..Amazing how I passed it by to begin with, having been a Metal fan before I was even a Hardcore fan...By now it should be apparent that I spend about 20 hours a day listening to music. I may have psychological problems, but as long as I can continue listening to music so fervently, bands like At The Gates will continue to stir my brain into a messy pink froth. As a matter of fact...wait, I need to put the album on right now...OH YEAH!!!! That is whats great about this music...technical, melodic death metal...it is as fast as demonic vultures flying from the depths for their next carcass, yet it maintains a solid melody throughout, with some amazing breakdowns and awesome guitar solos that never even get close to cheesy.

Plus, the singer yells "GO!" a few times, just like hardcore bands do. Which for some reason makes me super excited. I'll be walking down a NYC street, absolutely destroying my already frail eardrums, just waiting for that part, and then thrusting my finger into the sky as I yell GO!, much to the chagrin of the very untrusting New York natives around me. Thats what this music is capable of....Death Metal that makes you want to do stage dives....hell yeah!