The Red in the Sky is Ours

Day Seventeen. At the Gates is my favorite death metal band. While everyone tends to praise Slaughter of the Soul, I personally hail The Red in the Sky is Ours as their best. I would even go as far as claiming that it's the best death metal album ever. I am quite possibly literally alone in this. There's plenty of quality death metal to choose from. Gorgut's Obscura, Demilich's Nespithe, Entombed's Left Hand Path, Suffocation's Effigy of the Forgotten, Atheist's Unquestionable Presence. Hell, not too many people prefer The Red in the Sky is Ours over Slaughter of the Soul. Why on Earth do I rank this album higher than every single one of those?

For starters, At the Gates where really the first to constantly play two melodies, sometimes even three, at once throughout the entire course of every song on an album. Well above ninety percent of bands have two guitarists play the same exact riff all the time. Once in a while, they will insert a harmony where one guitar plays a melody, then the second guitar plays the same thing but in perfect thirds, or fifths, or an octave higher. At the Gates constantly played two different things. Sometimes they would harmonize, sometimes they would diverge. The two guitar lines would constantly switch back and forth between clashing and unifying. This constant interplay of melodies generates and releases tension that draws you in and keeps you engulfed in flames until the very end.

The songs themselves initially appear to be very chaotic. They are constantly transitioning between tempos and textures every seven seconds. Yet, there's a certain logic to it all. The polyphonies themselves carry varying levels of both intensity and complexity. As the songs progress, every riff generates a similar feel yet modified intensity and complexity than the one that came before. This way they they don't just go about randomly. There's something at the heart of each riff that ties them all together.

I play guitar very well, but I don't never bothered to learn music theory properly. I can't help but feel that At the Gates consciously used plenty of music theory to write this album. It just feels like it's been deliberately composed. There's so much going on with the very deliberate use of melody and harmony that you could probably write a thesis on this album (actually, someone literally did just that).

I hold the view that heavy metal started off playing just loud and fast blues and rock n roll. Then it became a journey to shed those influences by distancing itself away from it. The Red in the Sky is ours is lightyears apart from rock-n-roll. There are no pentatonic scales; only a wide variety of diatonic scales (mostly minor). This is probably a lot closer to classical music. But I'm not an expert on that either.

Not only is it totally not rock-n-roll, it's very different from you average death metal band. The production is very thin and dry. It's not heavy. It's totally not brutal. It's not even catchy.The emphasis is purely on the melodies and how they are carefully arranged among themselves. This probably explains why this album doesn't receive any attention. It's just not heavy and catchy enough for the average metalhead. It challenges the listener in a very different way that's just too much for those that just want to head bang.

This is At the Gates' best work. As happens to most artists, once they achieve the pinnacle of musical complexity, they hastily retreat into simpler songs and catchier riffs. Slaughter of the Soul represents this retreat. The production on that album is incredible. It's suitably heavy and catchy, which is why people like it so much. But I prefer the depth of The Red in the Sky is Ours. The way the riffs and melodies play off of each other will never cease to amaze me.

BUY OR DIE!