At the Gates: Gardens of Grief (1991)

Last year, Darkness Shall Rise Productions reissued three seminal works of Swedish death metal.  Each of the next three posts will cover those releases.

Demos are not normally supposed to sound this good.  The whole point of demos is that they are raw with low production.  The bands have not typically refined their sound.  And yet, we have this one, which arrived shortly before At the Gates released their debut album.  Honestly, this may be one of the best works At the Gates have ever done, and yes, I am including their landmark Slaughter of the Soul album.

Gardens is a simple, four-song demo clocking in at under 20 minutes.  But the ideas present paved the way for an entire subgenre of music, the Gothenburg melodeath sound.  Now, this demo bares little resemblance to the sound that the band later popularized.  This release is much more of a death metal sound that happens to have a fair amount of melody.  The band's songwriting ability and the performances of each of the musicians are all plainly evident here.  The lyrics are surprisingly insightful and the band displayed an ability to craft impressively progressive song structures.  The latter is unfortunately mostly characteristic of their earlier releases.  By Slaughter of the Soul they had streamlined everything in order to resonate more with wider audiences.  The result was reasonable commercial viability, but it sacrificed some of the soul of the band.

It is clear throughout this release that there was some room for the band to grow.  The vocals definitely improved over time to what they were on this release.  On the other hand, some things changed for the worse after this demo.  As I said before, this is likely one of the better recordings the band ever released.  I have not had it for a long time, so I am still assessing how I feel about it compared to Slaughter of the Soul, but it may be right up there.