To Drink from the Night Itself

To Drink from the Night Itself, At the Gates' sixth album, followed 2014's At War with Reality. Co-founding guitarist Anders Björler had asked for time to think after a show in August 2016, and in March 2017 he announced he was leaving; Tomas Lindberg later said that, after six months of waiting, an answer at last set the writing free. Bassist Jonas Björler, who had written around 40 per cent of Slaughter of the Soul and At War with Reality, became the main composer, and he and Lindberg wrote the album between them. Jonas Stålhammar, an old friend who played with Lindberg in The Lurking Fear, joined on guitar in September 2017, too late to shape the songs, though he wrote his own solos. Russ Russell, known for his work with Napalm Death, recorded the band at Parlour Studios in England in November 2017, and Lindberg cut his vocals in Gothenburg with Per Stålberg. Feeling that At War with Reality had come out too polished, he wanted a dirtier record for old-school fans. The concept comes from the German writer Peter Weiss's novel The Aesthetics of Resistance, first read by Lindberg some fifteen years earlier: the album treats art as a tool of revolution or of suppression, and the title is his metaphor for living through art. Costin Chioreanu drew the cover from the Pergamon Altar in Berlin, and Andy LaRocque of King Diamond plays a guest solo on "In Nameless Sleep". Century Media released the album on 18 May 2018, after videos for the title track, directed by Patric Ullaeus, and for "A Stare Bound in Stone" and "Daggers of Black Haze", both by Chioreanu. It reached No. 10 in Germany, No. 13 in Sweden, No. 18 in Finland and No. 8 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart, and Decibel ranked it 11th among the best albums of 2018. A limited mediabook added a five-track bonus disc, mostly versions sung with guests such as Rob Miller of Amebix; Trooper Entertainment's Japanese double CD, out the same day, adds a 2018 re-recording of "Raped by the Light of Christ".