“And as I dreamed the lilies white in the shade of a birch…”
Questi sono i veri At the Gates. Mica quelli patinati a cui dobbiamo la colpa di avere oversaturato il mercato con tutti i loro fuchi svedesi, pescatori che fino a qualche anno fa facevano i pescatori ora imbracciano chitarre ribassate e ci propongono migliaia di Slaughter Of The Soul.
Questi sono gli At The Gates, e più precisamente questo è l'Adrian Erlandsson non solo capace delle due famigerate costruzioni ritmiche alla At The Gates: tupatupatupatupa o tututupatututututupatutututututupa ma ci propina simpatici terzinati o spiazzanti cambi di ritmo degni di un batterista che si rispetti.
Infine la musica, stupenda. Chiunque abbia già da tempo digerito i Dark Tranquillity dell’immenso Skydancer non farà fatica a riconoscere in questo With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness un tentativo di evoluzione che parte appunto dalle stupende armonie disegnate dai cinque svedesi ora decontestualizzate (mamma mia) e trapiantate su un impianto che rimanda agli Entombed dell’era Clandestine, alfieri dello Swedish death più pesante e aggressivo.
La maggior parte dei riff è in tremolo picking ma ci sono anche le prime avvisaglie di quelle ritmiche più thrash/death che appariranno poi in tutti gli album seguenti.
Le vocals del buon Lindberg sono molto molto diverse da quelle di Slaughteriana memoria, sguaiate, imperfette forse, più proprie di un Vikernes (o di un Fridèn Skydanceriano) qualsiasi, ma mai così adatte alle linee di chitarra ora malinconiche ora lievemente dissonanti ora epiche ma sempre originali, spiazzanti con un lieve retrogusto folk-melodico che ha fatto la fortuna del death svedese.
Col tempo gli At The Gates hanno purtroppo perso la complessità, anche dal punto di vista dei testi (tutto l’album sembra essere un concept sul naturale potere purificatrice dell’oscurità, e del fuoco del tramonto, si sa da tempo di quanto il buon Lindberg sia un simpatico ubriacone), e l’indisciplina tipica di un gruppo giovane e fresco in favore di una maturità vagamente più easy listening che li ha portati a diventare una delle band più influenti in ambito estremo, e a mio parere è un grande peccato.
In canzoni come Raped By The Light Of Christ dal testo allucinante, The Break Of Autumn col suo rifferama letteralmente impressionante, la lunghissima (per gli standard degli At The Gates) Primal Breath, Stardrowned, la stupenda The Burning Darkness, Ever-Opening Flowers, Through The Red, non c’è alcuna struttura predefinita, i riff appaiono e scompaiono all’improvviso come delle comparse non ben istruite sul da farsi ma il tutto funziona così bene che le canzoni fluiscono perfettamente anche senza un minimo di coerenza geometrica, come guidate dall’istinto.
Sicuramente non un capolavoro per tutti ma un disco che insieme a Skydancer e al già diverso The Jester Race è una delle testimonianze più valide e importanti del movimento svedese quando ancora muoveva i primi passi e non era così pacioccoso (vedi Colony giusto per fare un esempio).
“Jesus, no prince of my starved hell to be / No way, my world it dies with me”
Elenco tracce testi samples e video
01 Beyond Good and Evil (02:42)
Jesus, no prince of my starved Hell to be
No way, my world it dies with me
Far beyond your eyes they seek
Beyond bonds of stars and skies
The kingdom where nothing dies
I am the stars burning evil in your heart
Beyond good and evil, we will never part
For every man and woman is a star
'Cause I burn inside you all, we will never part
02 Raped by the Light of Christ (02:59)
When the yellow dies under the velvet thoughts
Blood-bubbles nestled in thorns
I have travelled thrugh suns,
And the darkness of the end
Now I surrender to the void
And join with the pulse of the universe
The world burns with worms of fire
The world burns
The beauty in twisted darkness
Raped by the light of Christ
We were not born to follow
We don't need your guiding light
I tear the skies with my bare hands
There is no death for me
The world burns with worms of fire
Sun or animal, star or beast
Alone all the way to the heart of Christ
I'm free to die when I wish
I'm born from scarlet songs
And when the time is right
I shall forever walk alone
The beauty in twisted darkness
Raped by the light of Christ
Worlds end, through a thousand suns
03 The Break of Autumn (04:59)
Catch the rainbow if you can
It will alwawys be ahead of you
Years passing swifter than you ever thought
Today will soon be behind you
And the future remains out of reach
Hunting the sun, setting at the horison
When shadows threat to swallow your weak soul
The key of light, the solution of all
I saw it clearly behind the veil of reality
And as I dreamed the lilies white
In the shade of a birch
They withered in the frost of awakening
Fiery the angels fell from the spires of my fortress of youth
Silent explosions in my universe of pain
Appease my hunger, defeat my solitude
And let me follow where daydreams go
When ambitions fall
Watch the sky, there is proof of your transcience
The stars that saw the birth ofour ancestors
Shall watch our descendants last steps on earth
So, unnoticed we will pass away,
Like a flickering in the perpetual chaos
The timebird rose from it's nest of bones
And thrust it's beak in my eye
With the beat of charging wings
My transcience was confirmed
Time perhaps for a salutary sleep
I still long for that silent land of dreams
Where the flames expire, where the spark fades
And hunger is born again
04 Non-Divine (04:43)
From cold storms I emerge to inferno
Kiss me with your insanity, bless me with your plague
Burn through my head
The psychic treasures in the arena to find
Dead symbols that walk through the dreams of man
Non-divine, burning souls of red
Tounges of insanity , here I am
Lick me free from my dark past
And open my heart for your joy
I seek eternity where it lies to be found
My life will not end 6 feet under the ground
No rebirth in heaven where eternal sleep awaits
We must seek immortality beyond the seven gates
Make love with me this one last time
This one dead dream
And rot we can as gods
Together in a distant hell
Burn me with your tounges of love
Burn me free from my bitterness and hate
So let the light devour men
And eat them up with blindness
Non-divine, a restless soul
Worm, goat, eater of gods
Burn me with the3 tounges of your love
Burn me free from my hate
Set me on fire
Again and again
05 Primal Breath (07:22)
Look the herons in the greenbilled water
Their wet-ash wings wear medalions of patience
We drift on...
We have stories as old as the great seas
Break through the chest
Flying out the mouth
Noisy toungues that once were silenced
All the oceans we contian, coming to light
All the dark birds rush from the river
Leaving only the stillness of their language
There are no clocks to measure time
But the beating of our single hearts
You will know it is winter
By the way your dreams tremble like stones
When the wind comes through
The wind, full of hearts that beat quick and strong
06 The Architects (03:30)
Ornaments in silent darkness,
the image of man now torn from its structure
The smell of need,
the dwarfed soul of man,
attuned only to flesh
suffering from frustration
Alien to our own spirits
We're naked even in death
The dawn is yet to come
to fill us with knowledge
Pulsating waves of colour,
bleeding off into the black
A whisper of red screams through the night
The architects and the flesh
07 Stardrowned (04:02)
Slit open the skies and let out my stars
The night dies inside me
She's got ways to make me crawl
I respond like a machine
The sun shines from a thin sky
And these feelings they die
In the minds of the blind
Patterns red of love so dead
Under the floors, the dark woodsthey come back
Dark they needn't be, but your virgin blood is dead
The spark faded and gone
All the stars in her skin
The repulsion as I sin
She's roaring through my soul
All dressed in thoughts of flesh
With a beautiful wound I was born
It was all that I knew to own
Stardrowned
All the stars in her skin
The repulsion as I sin
She's roaring through my soul
Sears my nakedness my flesh
Stardrowned
08 Blood of the Sunsets (04:35)
The sun sets in a sea of love
Stab your demoniac smile in my brain
Seduce me with the blood of the sunsets
Lock me out from my body and it's pain
The golden wine of the sun
deep rich purple, whit and red
The crimson vintage of life and love
I'm drunk on the blood of the sunstes
I watch the burning clouds
fighting to get hold of the sun
Tak heed, I am born, god of the twilight
I am forever
Proud, naked, full of sin
Born where the flames never die
Lost in the garden of stars
"We used to situp ther for ages.
It was like we were giving birth to a new world.
A child of our spirits,
Wild with light, alive with colours."
"Have you ever considered true freedom?
Real true freedom.
We were gods, burning in the eternal twilight.
We were the end forever."
Beyond our sanity, a paradise for all to find
Blood of sunsets, the golden wine of the sun
10 Ever-Opening Flower (05:00)
Ever-opening flower
Feed me seven notes of love
Let it's wine burn through my veins
And free my sould from it's pain
Urges rage my fevered mind
Held back by dead note, blind
By the seventh sign of the seventh son
The seventh sun stes forever in the dark sea of my mind
Never shall i smile, never shall I die
Sun be gone, end my world
Enter darkness, rich of pain
I'm eternal, forever to be free
I'm one with fire, a thousand sun burn in me
Ever-opening flower
Feed me seven notes of love
Urges rage in my mind
Held back dead notes, blind
Carico i commenti... con calma
