COLUMBIA, S.C. — So-called At the Gates superfan Derek Chaulk was rattled after he discovered the Swedish metal band’s discography includes six other albums outside of “Slaughter of the Soul,” confirmed multiple sources who also just learned this information.
“At first I thought it was a mistake. Maybe it was six reissues of ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ that were remastered or had some demo tracks, or maybe even some live songs. But no, these are all apparently full-length albums,” said Chaulk while glancing at the band’s Spotify page. “I’ve been listening to them since the ‘90s and just assumed they released one perfect metal album and called it a day. The craziest part is that I’ve been the moderator of an At the Gates Reddit page for over a decade and nobody has ever mentioned any of their other releases. I’m looking forward to actually checking some of their other stuff out, but not until I listen to ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ a few hundred more times.”
Frontman Tomas Lindberg says this is a frustration the band has dealt with for decades.
“We had three albums before ‘Slaughter’ and people liked them just fine. Then after 1995 everything changed. Whenever we played something off of ‘The Red in the Sky is Ours’ people assumed we were playing a ‘new one’ and would head to the bathroom,” said Lindberg while mapping out the next “Slaughter of the Soul” anniversary tour. “It’s the real reason we broke up back in 1996. The mental anguish of having all our previous work dismissed was too much to handle. I started to question whether we even had written any other songs, I was losing touch. But nothing has changed, we released two more albums within the last five years and nobody seemed to notice.”
Music historian Ezra Handler believes At the Gates is a metal anomaly.
“With many bands of the genre, you will see fans discuss which albums they love, but they also like to discuss which albums are so bad they want to see the band murdered. Just look at Metallica, their fans love the early stuff, and would rather eat a bucket of puke than listen to anything after 1993,” said Handler. “With At the Gates, they have a fan base that is completely unaware they have other music, so these people can’t actually talk any crap. They just live in quiet bliss headbanging to the same 11 songs, 17 if they bought the reissue with bonus tracks.”
At press time, another diehard Weezer fan was banned from editing the band’s Wikipedia page when all the information about albums released after “Pinkerton” was once again erased.