Exclusive Interview: Tomas Lindberg from At The Gates

Tomas Lindberg from At The Gates calls in to talk about releasing a new album after 19 years, the writing process, his personal view on society, the success of the new album, and the state of Death Metal in this WSOU exclusive.

Below are a few excerpts from the interview done by Steve, check out the full audio version!

On the band reuniting:

"You're only as good as your last album. So we really wanted to prove ourselves in that aspect as well. That idea was that, in 2013, we made that decision to try to do a new record... It feels like the fans understand and respect this decision to come back with a new record."

On the theme of the album:

"...As soon as I stumbled upon this style of writing "magic-realism", kind of like a literature style from South America mostly, in the 50's and 60's, the way of writing and the philosophy behind it, when I stumbled upon that the flood gates just opened and I could just dive write in, and you start to create almost free. All of the writing went really quickly, of course, changing details here and there to match the music and stuff like that, that took some time, but the initial ideas for all the songs that went really quickly."

On his person beliefs:

"You go back only a hundred years, only half of the population could vote, you know, the women couldn't vote and they probably said 'yeah, this is the way it's gonna be,' but someone had to start a little bit of a revolution to change that. To think that we are fully developed as a society now, I think that's preposterous."

On the success of the new album:

"It's very flattering, but its kind of mind-numbing in a way, because we see ourselves as an underground death metal band, and death metal bands don't chart... We really wanted everyone to have something that they could recognize as a pure At The Gates experience, and I think charting, as you say, probably means that all these different kinds of fans that we have probably bought the album and found something in it that they can take to heart. That's very heartwarming and very rewarding to see."

On the state and direction of Death Metal:

"In one way it's better than every, because a tour like this actually works, where you can mix all of these different aspects from extreme music on one bill, and as you say, there may be some naysayers, but in general we see the reaction of some of that, and the ticket sales. We can actually see that, yeah, people are actually embracing the idea of a multi-facet metal scene, you know. I think also together with new media, you know, like social media, [you can] record your own music, not everything needs to go through a record label and be big anymore. So there's more chances to have people be a bit more adventurous when it comes to writing and performing music. It helps to broaden the whole spectrum. I think that stretching boundaries is really, now something good."

At the Gates will be playing the Decibel Magazine Tour in March and April!

Posted in: Metal, WSOU Exclusive, Interviews