5 Best Metal Albums Of May 2018
2. At The Gates – To Drink From The Night Itself
While May saw Amorphis enchant with the progressive and enticing potential of metal, the month also witnessed Sweden’s pioneering At the Gates create an energetically destructive offering in the form of To Drink from the Night Itself.
A quick listen to this disc’s lead single and title track would summarise the sheer frenetic joy that To Drink from the Night Itself relishes in. Pummelling percussion rumbles like an unforgiving earthquake beneath sublime guitar riffs that are simultaneously frantic and melodic. The thrashing chords of duelling shredders Martin Larsson and Jonas Stålhammar remain oddly hummable throughout the entire three-minute scorcher, their soaring brilliance dragged back down to Earth by the guttural growls of frontman Tomas Lindberg.
“To Drink from the Night Itself” is the first full track of the titular album, but, from there, be assured that the energy refuses to die down, continuing with just as much harmonic insanity through eleven more gigantic cuts.
At this point, it should go without saying that At the Gates’ sixth album is more than worth the four-year wait that fans had to endure to receive it. Truly, this quintet is the epitome of the phrase “quality over quantity”.