Intervista At the Gates (Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg)

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Hi Tomas, how are you doing?

I’m doing good, I’m doing good, a little bit tired today but otherwise totally fine.

“To Drink from the Night Itself” is coming out 4 years after “At War with Reality” which, in turn, came out 19 years after “Slaughter of the Soul”; was the process of recording this album easier, more natural, than with its predecessor?

It was definitely a more natural experience, so to say, we could talk more easily about what we wanted to do instead of, you know, the expectations, the pressure…we could just relax and that gave us room to be more creative this time around, to create something more adventurous, I would say [laughs].

Did you record it again at the Studio Fredman?

No, this time we recorded with Russ Russell in England in the Parlour Studios, he was actually the runner up for the producing spot for “At War with Reality”.
Most bands today go to producers that make every band sound the same, you know, [laughs] it’s very easy to get a good, clean sound nowadays, something that sounds like anybody else; Russ Russell is different in the way that he makes the bands he records sound like themselves, he tries to bring out the essence of the band and that’s exactly what we needed for this one.
We told Russ what we wanted to get across, that we wanted a more angry record that felt more urgent and desperate than the last one, a little bit more edgy, maybe a bit rougher sound and he was totally into that and understood exactly what we wanted, so it was special recording with him.

Can you tell me something more about the artwork? What is its relation to the album? And did you have a role in its production or did you leave the whole thing to the designer?

The artwork is again done by Costin Chioreanu, he did the artwork of “At War with Reality” and designed a lot of our animated videos and such.
It is kind of weird because we wanted something different this time around and I guess that you shouldn’t go to the guy who did the last one [laughs], but it made sense because Costin is so close to the band, he understands the band perfectly and it’s really easy to work with him, he will always give 100% to understand what we want.
It ties together with the concept, well, the album is loosely based on a novel, “The Aesthetics of Resistance” by Peter Weiss, and one of the opening scenes in the book is when the main character is standing and look at the Pergamon altar, which is at the Pergamon museum in Berlin, an old, ancient Greek temple and I just wanted to capture that feeling, that monumental feeling of looking at that, so basically it’s his interpretation of the Pergamon altar.

The video of “A Stare Bound in Stone” is quite peculiar, who had the idea behind it and what is its meaning?

Actually, again, we worked with Costin with that one too [laughs].
He had the idea of…we actually started with Jonas having an idea of the shadow play kind of thing, you know, a shadow theatre kind of vibe, but when we told the idea to Constin it evolved to be more intricate, with double layers of us on top of each other; in the editing we made it a bit more chaotic, there’s a lot of deep symbolism, metaphors in other parts of the video.
I just really wanted to portray the feeling of the song and the feeling of that opening chapter of the book, all about struggle and fighting the habits of apathy, it’s just a way to portray the message of the song itself.

Last year Anders Björler left the band, what happened with him? Did he contribute to the songwriting of the new songs?

Anders was kind of feeling, how can you say, he was definitely tired of touring, that was the main thing, but he also was a bit burned out after the writing and recording process of “At War with Reality” where he took the lead role a little bit.
He didn’t feel that he had it in him much at this stage, and we said how much we wanted to continue so he basically said that he wanted us to continue without him and pursue all the creative ideas that we had.
We didn’t have a single note written before he left, me and Jonas wrote the whole album in maybe six month, it was a total creative explosion.

Something I noticed when listening to this album, and when I saw you with The Lurking Fear a few months ago, is how your voice sounds exactly like 20 or more years ago; how did you preserve it so well?

I guess it’s a little bit lower in tone than it was before, actually, maybe the rasp and the energy are still there but, you know, it’s natural to go down a little bit in tone when you get a little bit older.
I don’t know, I guess I stumbled upon, when I was young, how to sing without hurting myself, you know, using the right movements, singing with bally and all that kind of stuff, but I never went to a training or anything.
I guess it’s something I found out when I was young, when I was a kid and I started shouting at the records of my favourite bands in my room at home [laughs], so I guess I accidentally stumbled upon something that was perfect for me.

I mentioned The Lurking Fear, will you keep doing album with the band, or was it a kind of one-off thing?

We are still doing it, we are actually writing stuff right now for a new album, I think we have about half album written already and we are doing shows, maybe not as much as we want to because of At the Gates, but we are playing a show in just two weeks so we are still doing it.

You recently re-recorded “Raped by the Light of Christ” for a special vinyl release; in the latest years many bands re-recorded their classic albums, what are your thoughts on that? Is it something that you could see At the Gates doing in the future?

As a selfish thing I think it would be fun to do it, to see how it sounds, but I’m always very precautious with that, you know, I’m a Metal fan as well and I know how it feels sometimes when your favourite band re-records and album and it doesn’t have the same feeling.
It might be interesting for the band but not for the listeners, or maybe for some listeners, I don’t really know [laughs], but we thought it would be a fun idea for a song for a special edition.
We also wanted to reintroduce ‘Raped by the Light of Christ’ in the live set again, it has been absent for a while, so we thought about the idea of re-recording that just for a special limited edition.
It was just something that was interesting for us.

“At War with Reality” kind of divided fans and critics a bit, what are your expectations for this album?

From my position I’ve seen “At War with Reality” did pretty well, I was almost expecting more critics; we had a lot of luck with fans, and the journalists liked it a lot.
So far with “To Drink from the Night Itself”, from what I’ve seen it’s been the same, of course you’ll always have the internet troll saying that only the first album was good and whatever [laughs], but in general the reaction has been really nice, we are super happy and excited.
I think our fans have always followed us through thick and thin, you know, and it seems they really understand what we do and appreciate it, going a little bit more Death Metal again, a little bit more Heavy, a bit darker, and people seem to enjoy that.

“Slaughter of the Soul” is considered a classic and is very loved by the fans. Extreme Metal fans are often very conservative, and many would like to just keep getting that album with every new release of yours. Do you feel trapped in your own success, so to say?

No, never, I mean, it’s a good album but if you listen to the others they all sound different, so I think our fans, out real fans who followed the band, they know we always change and they are ready for change, always.
I think even the most die-hard fans would think it’s boring if tried to do “Slaughter of the Soul” again, also it would be fake, it wouldn’t be honest and At the Gates have always been about being 100% honest with the music and been true to our fans.
We could never do that.

I know that you have been teaching social studies, now that you’ve been busy with At the Gates and The Lurking Fear are you still doing that?

Yeah, for this term, there are like six weeks left, I’ll leave work two weeks after the album comes out [laughs].
I’ll take a leave of absence so that I can focus on At the Gates 100%; the last few months have been crazy, but it’s also been very fun.
I like both things, in one way I would like to continue but it would be too hard right now with so much stuff going on.

Do you think you’ll go back to that after the tour is over?

That’s the plan, of course I focus on one thing and then I go back to the other thing.
I’m very much into the teaching thing so I’d never want to stop that totally.

I read that you are the author of Darkthrone’s logo, how did you happen to work with them?

Oh, that’s back in the really old days, probably like ’87 or ’88, I don’t really remember.
Back in those days everybody would write to each other, it was a very small underground scene; I had a fanzine with one of my closest friends, he wrote to Gylve (Gylve Fenris Nagell A.K.A. Fenriz of Darkthrone) he was tight friend with him, I was tight friend with Metalion from Slayer Magazine, a magazine from Norway, it was a close scene.
They didn’t ask for a logo, they had a logo which was pretty ugly, actually, [laughs] for the first one or two demos; I just happened to draw that, I was probably on the phone and you know when you start drawing something when you’re on the phone [laughs], and I just stumbled upon it and thought, “This is pretty cool, what can I do with it?”.
So I sent it to Fenriz and he liked it so…I don’t know, that was a lot of years ago, 30 years ago.

Thank you, that was my last question, I’ll leave to you the last word.

Always thanks to all our Italian fans, it’s always a pleasure meeting the crowd there and I think we will be back this summer, we have a festival there, so it will be great.
We are looking forward to playing the new songs together with all the old classics for our die-hard Italian fans.

Davide Sciaky