Finally, Tomas Lindberg goes one on one with the GRIM-1:
HELL-O Tomas! What's your favorite song on The Nightmare Of Being and why?
It's so very hard to pick out songs in that way. We're old men now. We write albums. All the songs are sequenced meticulously to fit in the song order. But of course, the things we haven't done before is pretty rewarding to be able to do that and get a good reaction from that. With that i'm talking about Songs like “The fall Into Time,” “Garden of Cyrus,” “Cosmic Pessimism” maybe. Saying that, more like what you first might call, traditional At The Gates songs like “The Paradox,” for example, we couldn't have written that song in the nineties. It's so much more complex. The small details and everything. So I'm pretty proud of all the things on this record actually.
What is your role in the creative process with
the lyrical themes and album themes?
It's basically, I kind of
give the suggestion for a concept, a theme for this record. But then
I always talk it over, mostly with Jonas [Bjorler], who's the main
songwriter, and discuss where we want to take this album. Which
themes sort of match what emotions musically. And there's a lot of
gnarly discussions about that. Where we see it going, does this
musical concept fit the musical development on the record and stuff
like that. So it's a kind of joint decision, but the idea for the
lyrical concepts always come from me.
At The Gates has
always been transparent about its literary inspirations. Does that
come from you, or from the band as a whole?
It's a lot of
both. The whole theme of the record goes into pessimist philosophies.
I was working really hard to try to understand that philosophy the best
that I could as an amateur, which I sort of am in that perspective.
It was fun, on a side note to work with the writer Eugene Thacker on
the song “Cosmic Pessimism.” And on that whole album he was
responding to my emails, if I was going the right direction on the
lyrics and the themes.
What are you reading at the
moment?
Now it's summer holiday and the record is done, so I'm
reading science fiction and stuff like that. So, you know, stuff to
relax a little bit. Even with science fiction, I like the more
curveball stuff there where they have a more philosophical touch. The
one I'm reading now is called Kraken where it's an underground
cultist hiding in London. It's pretty cool, urban fantasy more than
science fiction.
What do you consider one of the standout
deep cuts from At The Gates' discography?
It's an odd
discography because every song sounds different than each other. I
feel like you can probably divide it - well it sounds grandiose - but
into different eras of the band, different periods of the band. But
like the early period going from the start to Slaughter of the
Soul, we sort of the saw the band progressing, like to condense
the songs more and more. Compressing the songs into more streamlined
music. And I guess Slaughter Of The Soul was
like the endpoint of that era, because you couldn't compress it any
more. But from that era, the second full length With Fear I Kiss
The Burning Darkness is the more underrated one. It has some gems
on it. It has of course that really grim production maybe that's hard
to get past. But there are some really cool tracks on that one. It's
always been there...the progressive stuff. There could have been a
saxophone on that one too.
Was it weird after At The Gates
broke up to hear so many metalcore and melodic death metal bands
ripping off your sound?
You don't have to like all the bands
that are inspired by you, but it's flattering even if you don't like
the bands listen to your stuff and get influenced by it. I still to
this day haven't heard a band who sound like At The Gates, so people
must try harder. I think they take one part of the formula and that
part they put into their music. Which is how you use your influences
I guess. We do too. I haven't heard a band that has all that
ingredients at once.
What's the origin of the name “At The
Gates?” I've seen some merch that alludes to it coming from the
Pink Floyd album Piper At The Gates of Dawn?
We
knew about that album of course, but it's actually stolen from Fields
Of the Nephilim song. “The Dwellers At The Gates of Silent Memory.”
That was the first name of the band. “Let's shorten that down a
little bit.” It helped, a little bit.
How has your
creative process grown since the nineties, if at all?
I think
we are as curious as we were then. That's never changed. We're still
really open minded when it comes to adding other stuff into the mix
of what At The Gates is. I think the maturity from our age and all
the years in the metal scene that we've learned is, we're pretty safe
with what At The Gates is now. And because of that, when we write we
will sound like At The Gates whenever we do, and because of that we
can throw in more curveballs without losing the core elements of at
the gates. And that's why you can still recognize that even in songs
like “Garden of Cyrus.” And I think that's the maturity in the
songwriting department. And with lyrics, they're more theoretically
grounded without losing that honesty. So there's been some
evolvement.
Especially on Slaughter Of The Soul,
it has a big arena rock feel to the song structure. Where did that
come from?
We talked a lot about it. We had done a lot
of oddball stuff before. Very intricate songs with thousands of riffs
before. What had we not done, we had not done a really straight
forward verse-chorus record. I think the decision to make the songs
shorter and snappier was a joint decision.
Is there a band
in the Swedish scene you feel in underrated?
In the metal
scene, if you're a Swedish especially death metal band, it's hard to
be underrated, because everyone looks forward to a Swedish band to
be, to have some sort of quality. So most Swedish bands get the
recognition they deserve I guess. There's always been the sort of
young bands that pop up and disappear, like Morbus Chron. I
was a big fan of them for example. I feel like other examples of
music in Sweden like the prog bands may be underrated in the international
scene. Bands like Änglagård,
Antidote, Dungen, those kind of bands like that are in
the underground still even if they're still very cool bands.
What
music are you rocking in your personal tape deck lately?
It's
a mix. I just bought myself a brand new record player so I've been
going through, polishing off the vinyls, playing them again. I've
been dusting off a lot of the old metal records. Early eighties,
thrash and NWOBHM records I've been digging a lot. A long with a lot
of jazz records too. It sort of goes everywhere. It depends on the
mood too for the hour.
You mentioned Eugene Thacker's book
Cosmic Pessimism
as an inspiration for the song. Can you elaborate on that?
Pessimist
philosophy – that's the starting point there. I was doing some
reading for The Lurking Fear for our new record. The first record was
based on the Lovecraft universe. So I wanted to read like a current,
up to date horror writers, see what they were doing. I stumbled upon
Thomas Ligotti. He's really great writer. But then my bandmate Martin
asked if I read his non fiction book The Conspiracy Against The
Human Race. That got me started. It was so good. It's kind of
like Essay writing, but his introduction is philosophy basically, and
he name drops a lot of writers...The most interesting thing I found
was that it's not really negative. That kind of threw me off a little
bit and I was really intrigued by that. And that part of philosophy
can be a lot of self help for us people here.
Is there a
vocal performance you're most proud of besides At The Gates?
I
always said that the music kind of needs a certain vocal performance.
It needs a certain tone. And that's what I find interesting in other
projects because you learn something when you do that. With The
Lurking Fear I did a sort of classic death metal style which is not
too far off from At The Gates. I think the most odd vocals I've done
have been The Great Deceiver. That's where I do more like dark indy
rock singing in some songs. That was cool to try. There's some stuff
there that might intrigue some people.
How do you keep your
pipes in shape to deliver the goods, vocally?
It actually
gets a bit easier every year because you kind of develop a technique.
I've never been to vocal training. I work with myself a lot and kind
of figure out a technique that is not so hard on me physically,
because I'm not getting any younger either. The trick is to take care
of yourself on tour. Not go binge drinking the night before the show
anymore. That's not possible. Drink a lot of water and rest. I've
developed a monitor in-ear system that really works for me so I can
always hear myself. That was usually the problem when I was younger.
I couldn't hear the vocals and then I screamed too hard and my voice
started cracked.
What's one record that holds a special
place in your heart?
There's so many man. I listen to like 20
records a day. It's really hard. Right this moment I've been
relistening to some of the earlier eighties stuff, like that. One
underrated death metal record is Strappado by Slaughter. That
guitar tone is like four years ahead of that Entombed guitar sound.
It's like, crushing.
Thank you Tomas Lindberg for going one on one with the GRIM-1. Read my review of At The Gates' new album The Nightmare Of Being via Invisible Oranges.
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