at the gates (of awesome)

There won't be another dawn
We will reap as we have sown
- At the Gates

Then.
1995.
This was the year that the war in Yugoslavia ended, the year when Ireland finally allowed people to divorce one another, and the year I published my thesis and ran away from College. It was also the year when our small group of friends had traveled to Uppsala to visit a gaming convention in order to promote a game that we planned to release the next year. Lamenting our lack of new and decent music to be inspired by, a local acquaintance led us down the cold streets towards Fyrisån, the murky little river that bisects the city. There he unveiled a small music store, filled to the brim with metal of all kind and set us loose inside. After a brief rummage through the shelves we ended up in a discussion with the owner of the shop about the bands we currently were enamored with. My friend, ever the impatient one, popped the big question: Was there any band that we should listen to but didn’t? In a metal store this amounts to throwing down the gauntlet, suddenly the store owner has to prove not only his expert knowledge of the music he sells, he also has to judge what the customers might like, and, perhaps most important of all, set himself apart as a true metalhead, one in the know.

Surprisingly enough the owner didn’t have to think at all, he immediately ripped out a CD that he had kept underneath the counter, revealing an eerie cover in orange brown and black, and a name we had never heard before; At the Gates. Intrigued, we made a move towards the headphones, already preparing to argue over who would get to listen first. But the owner simply smiled and shook his head, putting the CD in the player that connected to the store’s speakers and turned the volume up. We waited with bated breath as a static hiss filled the store, followed by a sequence of grinding mechanical noises that evoked images of unknown terrors. Then, through the noise, a voice hissed "We are blind to the worlds within us, waiting to be born." And, a silent breath later, the drums were unleashed, half a beat ahead of the base, followed by guitars whipping up a frenzied rhythm that left us gasping for breath, regaining it just in time for the growling, bitter vocals spitting out the lyrics. I could feel my face hurting, but it took a moment to realize that it wasn’t because I was being flayed by soundwaves, but because I was smiling so hard. I looked to my friend, mouthing a ‘Bloody Hell’ since no words could be heard above the music, and saw that he was smiling like a shark as well. As one man we reached into our pockets to pull out the money we had saved for food and games, because we did not really need to hear more than those first 30 seconds, we were sold. Completely.

I later learned that we were not the only ones having that reaction to the album, but it was too little, too late since the record company dropped the ball on promoting them. At the Gates broke up, torn apart by the lack of recognition and tensions between the singer and the rest of the band. They all went on to form other bands, but none of them reached the heights of that pivotal album, Slaughter of the Soul. Over time, word of mouth did its thing, and it eventually became cited as one of the albums that pioneered the Swedish Death metal sound, or Gothenburg Metal as it is sometimes known. I kept playing my CD, and I kept wearing the longsleeve I bought at the same time, saddened by the knowledge that I would never get another studio album from them, or have the possibility to see them live. Or so I thought.


Now.
2008.
The global financial crisis is gathering steam, oil has hit the 100$ per barrel mark, and I am feeling like a refugee from some low budget porn-nazi movie with my black rubber raincoat and the cleavage from hell. I have lost my friends somewhere in a crowd of 50 000 metalheads meandering back and forth between concerts and beer-tents, somewhere just outside the tiny village of Wacken, Germany. I have little hope of finding them by now, even though we had decided on a designated meeting spot outside one of the tents. The drizzling rain has made people wrap themselves in the black plastic raincoats the festival included in the welcoming package, or failing that, in cheap disposable garbage bags. By now the entire concert area had turned into a black muddy field filled with shiny black shades sliding past, pale faces and ghostlike hands in the darkness. The colored flashes from the show in progress was turning everybody two-dimensional and strange. I wouldn’t be able to find or recognize anybody, not even myself if I happened past a mirror.

I felt a bit strange when I sat down on my concrete block next to the bar where we were supposed to meet up. The block was next to a tarp wall, and one by one, very drunk metalheads would wander up to piss against the tarp. I wonder if it is an old reflex from the days of marking their territory on the plains, or whether it is the instinct to at least not show full frontal nudity when you piss. Regardless of the reason, there was quite a stench but at least I could sit down. And my feet required sitting, stench or not. During the fifteen hour bus ride to get here I had noticed that they had started to swell up, only to become infested with a rash that turned to blisters, making me unable to wear anything but sandals. In the mud. And the piss. And yet I was smiling.

You see, I was there to see At the Gates. They had finally fallen to the multitude of fans begging their return, and had agreed to go on one final tour to end all tours. Me and my friends had decided to intercept them in Wacken, thirteen years after we had first listened to their record. I was feeling like a child on Christmas eve, filled with breathless anticipation, tinged by a deeply rooted fear that nothing could live up to what I had already imagined. Would they be good? Would they be able to capture the spirit of what they once had been? Would they even be a good band on stage? Not all bands are, and I have had more than one set of heroes spoiled after I saw them lack charisma on stage. Would this happen again?

With my gut tied in knots a sailor would be proud of, I meander towards the stage where the show would soon begin. The rain had let up by now, and people shed their plastic cocoons, revealing a hoard of fans looking just as lost and nervous as me. I clutch the camera I have around my neck, determined to capture this moment any way I could, and then I wait, quietly, together with everybody else. It is an eerie feeling, a crowd of tens of thousands quiet fans, watching every movement on the stage as it slowly is prepared. Then everything turns black, and the crowd falls utterly silent. Out walks the band to a subdued ambient tune, their backs towards the audience. Then, as one, they turn around and let it rip. The best opening ever. The one from the very song that named the album, Slaughter of the Soul.

First the twin guitars riff for a moment, then comes the drums DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM and then the singer screams, at the top of his lungs GO!. I am blown away. No, not even that, I am crushed, demolished, ground to a pulp, raised to the heavens and so bloody amazed that I can’t even feel anything but abject joy. I have ended up in a group of people that together with me has our own little mini concert, we scream along with all the lyrics, we dance in the mud, and we celebrate the amazing thing that is happening right now. The air is crackling with energy. There is magic and joy. Oh such joy. And on the stage, towering above us all is the band we all have come here to adore. At the Gates.



And they are smiling. That is the thing that strikes me the most as I try to snap of some pictures in a sea of heaving, dancing flesh. Their smiles. They smile as if they have waited for this as long as we have, the singer bounces across the stage, a huge grin plastered over his face, covered in a beard that could only make Chuck Norris proud. The guitarists smile as they grind out riff after steely riff. You do not smile and play death metal, but At the Gates do, they smile and we dance, and sing and scream and all those thirteen years melt away, and I am still that girl in a store, discovering their music for the first time, discovering a whole new world. I smile as I remember.

And I am still smiling as I write this.
I doubt I will ever stop.

I left the festival with trench foot, and I will leave you with a youtube clip from the concert. Unlike the pictures above, this one is not mine, but I wanted to share the feeling I had that night. You will not be able to hear the singer at all, only the crowd singing along, even going dundumdum to the guitar riffs. This is the sound of fifty thousand dreams coming true, all at once.