GATES OF ISHTAR - At Dusk And Forever

Artist: Gates Of Ishtar
Album: At Dusk And Forever

Year: 1998
Genre: Melodic Death Metal

This album reminds me of my love for imported CDs in the 90s.  Why imports?  Well, due to international shipping requirements, the discs always arrived at our store without shrink wrap, which gave me an opportunity to listen to any import that we ordered.  Yes, this was before these easy, online days of “checking bands out.”  I was lucky enough to have control of what the store carried, so I ordered everything I could by bands I was eager to hear.  This led me to many new discoveries including the obscure Gates Of Ishtar.

My musical curiosity in that era was heavily focused on the black and death metal coming out of Europe, so I ordered anything that had that description in the distro one-sheet.  Metal was making some creative and groundbreaking shifts away from the typical styles of thrash, power and doom.  One of these shifts was a revolutionary musical phenomenon centrally located in Gothenburg, Sweden.   In final decade of the millennium, the bands At The Gates, Dark Tranquility and In Flames forged what would become known as melodic death metal.  At The Gates took a blunt, straight forward approach, Dark Tranquility was technically chaotic. and In Flames combined brutality with Maiden-inspired guitar leads and structures.  All three with very different sounds; yet, all three fused their death metal with melody and created what would become a powerful and popular movement in modern heavy metal.  1,247 km northeast of Gothenburg, Gates Of Ishtar was honing their melodic death metal skills and conjured the outstanding record At Dusk And Forever.

The band’s third, and final, effort is firmly rooted in the furious and bombastic At The Gates style; even to the point some might consider it less of an influence and bordering on plagiaristic.  I’m not a fan of bands being a carbon copy of another band, but, especially in this case, when the copy is slightly better than the original, I’m pretty forgiving.  With that being said, I do find myself listening to At Dusk And Forever much more than Slaughter Of The Soul, and that right there is a testament to how good I believe this record is. 

Although the whole record is a razor sharp aural atomic bomb, my amazement with this album lies heavily in the guitar work.  The drums, bass and vocals never stop  pounding away overtly aggressive rhythms, yet, it’s the guitar that sets this album above so many other competitors.  Never have I heard the combination of melody and intensity used throughout whole songs.  Guitar player Urban Granbacke doesn’t utilize solos or interludes to produce the highly memorable passages.  His playing is rather innovative and shapes each song as he stunningly infuses melody directly into every riff which give the songs; an infectious quality not common in death metal.  By the end, you've been happily steamrolled by 36 minutes of unrelenting Swedish melodic death metal that you can't wait to hear it again.

Listen to "At Dusk And Forever" here.