The Gothenburg legends’ three reunion albums – 2014’s At War With Reality, 2018’s To Drink From The Night Itself and new release The Nightmare Of Being each feature concepts constructed around some intriguingly highbrow ideas and themes. At War With Reality is a concept album based on the magical realist literature genre, while To Drink From The Night Itself provides an elegant analysis of the history of art and aesthetics. The Nightmare Of Being tackles philosophical pessimism, in apt service of one of At The Gates’ darkest, heaviest and all-round weirdest works.
To clarify – philosophical pessimism is a worldview that challenges optimism and the notion of progress, and one that views human existence as fundamentally absurd. Its Western roots can be found in the works of, amongst others, Schopenhauer and Rousseau, however the perspective that The Nightmare Of Being is most aligned with and inspired by is that of modern thinkers Eugene Thacker and Thomas Ligotti. At The Gates vocalist and lyricist Tomas Lindberg has cited Ligotti’s seminal text The Conspiracy Against The Human Race as a key influence on the album, and the track ‘Cosmic Pessimism’ features lyrics taken from Thacker’s writings.
So what effect does all of this bruising subject matter have on the craft of The Nightmare Of Being? Lindberg has stated that he wanted this album to be “a really dark record”, and the weighty thematic core certainly seeps into the musicianship. This is At The Gates’ most unusual release since their idiosyncratic debut The Red In The Sky Is Ours. ‘Garden Of Cyrus’ is a mid-tempo work of wild prog brilliance, featuring unpredictable structural changes and a well-placed, if slightly-disarming saxophone solo. ‘Cosmic Pessimism’ is another hugely uncharacteristic inclusion, utilising a strange motorik momentum and silky guitars to bolster spoken-word vocals about how “pessimism is the last refuge of hope”.
None of which is to say that At The Gates have lost their cutting edge. ‘The Paradox’ makes great use of the kinetic, bouncing rhythms that the band made famous, as does the brutal and propulsive ‘Touched By The White Hands Of Death’. Closer ‘Eternal Winter Of Reason’ is an excellent symbiosis of everything At The Gates are capable of, and perhaps points in the direction that the band will soon move towards. Despite The Nightmare Of Being’s themes concerned with the futility of progress, the album sees At The Gates stretch themselves in ways we haven’t seen before. It’s a bold and brave step forward, one which suggests that the Swedish veterans’ creative flame is anything but flickering out.