At the Gates' Martin Larsson Picks His Favorite Song Off All of the Band's Albums

Longtime At the Gates guitarist Martin Larsson is here to tell you about his favorite song from each of the band's albums, as well as that all-important Gardens of Grief demo.

This all comes upon the emotional release of The Ghost of a Future Dead, which will be the last to feature iconic vocalist Tomas Lindberg, who died last September at the age of 52. It's a heavy loss for the metal community and, of course, the many who called "Tompa" a beloved bandmate, including Larsson.

Larsson joined At the Gates in 1993, replacing guitarist Alf Svensson who had appeared on the demo and first two LPs, The Red In the Sky Is Ours and With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness. Each showcased that At the Gates were capable of evolution, which continued when Larsson took up the role, making his debut on 1994's Terminal Spirit Disease. A year later, the band released Slaughter of the Soul, which has become one of the most influential death metal records in history.

READ MORE: At the Gates Share Emotional Reflection on Final Album With Tomas Lindberg

About the constants in At the Gates' music, Larsson says, "The banal, quasi-philosophical answer would be change, I guess. So with that out of the way... There's a streak of melancholy in a lot of Swedish music that I think we inherited organically. Especially in the '70s, a lot of the artists were influenced by domestic folk music so we had daily exposure of that tonality. A song such as "Boeves Psalm" by Lars Hollmer was on the radio all the time in the '80s, just to give an example. Even the Swedish hard rock/metal-bands such as 220 Volt had a touch of this nordic melancholy. It doesn't necessarily sound like folk music, but that's the origin."

"Musical curiosity is another constant," the guitarist adds, "As much as we grew up, and will always be metalheads, we're all voracious music fans in general. That has to shine through a little bit, I think."

Turning his attention to Lindberg's all-important presence, Larsson explains, "There's also a sense of frustration in Tompa's lyrics — be it social, existential, romantic, political, cosmic, cultural or whatever — that I thinks spills over into the music. On that note, I don't think people realize how much he's been involved in the songwriting. He hasn't written any of the actual music, but he was always very involved in the arrangements and kept moving parts around, adding and subtracting until it felt right. I would say that that's the X-factor in our music. And not to forget his vocal phrasing, which he kept perfecting to the very end."

Regarding the band's reunion in 2007 compared to now, Larsson reflects, "There's quite a difference between Gardens of Grief and Slaughter of the Soul. We've had the opportunity to fill in the gaps a little on four more albums now, but also to further broaden the picture. On every new album we've tried a few new things, just like we always did, whether it's something blatantly different or something subtle with the arrangement of a song. We've also been able to tour a lot more than we did in the '90s and we have put a lot of effort in playing the best shows we can. Nothing fancy, no embellishments, just solid, honest metal shows. So hopefully we leave after us a reputation as a live band you could depend on."

Now, allow Martin Larsson to tell you more about his favorites.

Martin Larsson's Favorite Song Off Every At the Gates Album

Gardens of Grief (demo) - "City of Screaming Statues"

It could be any of the four, really. I always thought of them as a solid unit. But "City of Screaming Statues" was the first ATG song I heard.

We booked a Bolt Thrower show in my hometown and wanted to have Grotesque as one of the support bands, but we got ATG instead. They played the proggy mid part at soundcheck and I thought they played "Act of Contrition" from the latest Dark Angel album (which I dug a lot, but I wasn't very upfront about it since it wasn't considered cool). I probably wasn't paying much attention.

It's also clearly influenced by King Crimson, which I had recently discovered. So ATG were instantly a new favourite band.

The Red in the Sky Is Ours - "Windows"

Jonas sent me the advance tape for the album with a slightly apprehensive comment in his letter that there was a bit of a change musically, since he knew how much I dug the demo. He described it as having more sorrowful (sorgsna) melodies. But again it was right up my alley. "Windows" is a good example.

Reading the reviews on Metal-Archives often cracks me up. I'm a huge fan of the album myself, of course, but the music seems to work like rorschach pictures where they're actually writing more about themselves rather than about the album. I think mostly the grand plan was to see whether it sounded cool or not. Which really isn't a guiding light to sneeze at.

With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness - "Primal Breath"

Alf in his prime. That was the only downside with joining the band myself, that it was because of him leaving. I'm as big an Alf fan as anyone. There's a part in this song that we just kept playing back then, every chance we got, me and the twins. Or at least that's how I remember it.

Jonas later added that part to the end of his arrangement of "The Scar", the version we played at Roadburn. Adrian had a suggestion that we should buy some plastic herons and put in the wings somewhere for Tompa to point at while singing the lyrics live.

Terminal Spirit Disease - "The Swarm"

This is probably the first time we used what I always think of as the Soundgarden chord (I think it's a sus2, if you want to get technical). The first time I noticed it was in "Room a Thousand Years Wide" — such a great song.

"The Swarm" is one of the first ATG songs with more of a thrash type of guitar playing, which I was used to in my previous band. That may be one of the reasons that I was considered to replace Alf, that I had experience in playing the style they wanted to go toward. But what do I know?

Slaughter of the Soul - "Slaughter of the Soul"

We all grew up on hard rock/heavy metal and we wanted to make a more direct, to the point album like the ones that inspired us to start playing ourselves. We never expected a lot of people to pay attention outside of our fairly small scene — we just wanted to try something new.

This may be the song I've played the most times in my life and I'm still not sick of playing it. That has to say something. There's a really heartwarming clip of this on the 'Tube, that Municipal Waste's light guy Tito filmed in NY in '08. Look for the title and "What does Tito see" and you'll find it.

At War with Reality - "The Night Eternal"

Since we began making records again we always tried to break a little new ground while retaining the essence of the band. I think this song is a good example of that. Also I think Costin's video really captures and enhances the epic, monumental feeling of the song.

This remained the closing song of our live shows until the end.

To Drink from the Night Itself - "The Mirror Black"

Another good song to finish on — we used to play this just before the encores. The previous album had a very clean production so we wanted to make this one pretty dirty. Some people have issues with that, which is fine, but it pisses me off that I occasionally see someone blaming Russ who recorded it. It sounds the way we wanted it to sound. Jonas really stepped up as a songwriter with this album. For the first time all the music is by him.

The Nightmare of Being - "Eternal Winter of Reason"

I'm starting to see a pattern with album closers here. It took a while for me to really appreciate this song but now I think it's one of our best. On these albums where Jonas wrote all the music (but there's actually an Anders-riff in this one), with the odd exception he wrote the guitar solos too. I think you can tell in this one especially since it's such an integral part of the song and it just lifts the whole song to a higher level.

The Ghost of a Future Dead - "Det oerhörda"

It feels very good that we managed to do one last album with Anders back. Again, this song is a little different from what we've done before, which is usually what excites me the most when demos for new songs start to bounce around.

On that note, it was such a pleasant surprise when I first heard the "Cosmic Pessimism" demo for the previous album. I did not expect Jonas to write a kind of kraut-Kyuss song like that.

I feel very privileged to have been part of this band.

Also, going back to "Det oerhörda" and being grateful, I'm very happy that Wallenberg is doing some vocals on this song. He's a very good friend of all of us and he's been in close vicinity of the band since the beginning, even before my time.

The Ghost of a Future Dead is out now on Century Media. Get your copy from the Loudwire Vinyl Shop below.

Below, see At the Gates in our list of The Best Death Metal Album of Each Year Since 1985: