Here’s a Sneak Preview of the Drums on the New At the Gates Record

If you had a betting pool on whether the new At the Gates record would have 6/8 sections that alternate between half time and fast kick/snare polka beats, then I hope to Satan you voted “yes,” because of course it will fucking have those. Drummer Adrian Erlandsson gives a quick tour of his kit, all mic’d up and in the middle of tracking his band’s new record At War with Reality, and he’s certainly right back into the groove of At the Gates’ classic sound. Yes, the band always got a little flack for creating one (admittedly groundbreaking) sonic milleu and sticking with it, but it’s been 20 years so I think “pure, uncut At the Gates” is exactly what fans are looking for.

It’s tough to get a good look at exactly what mics the engineers at Gothenburg’s Studio Fredman chose to capture the kit, but it looks like that might be a small diaphragm condenser on the snare. Adrian does focus on the kit itself, though: a Tama Starclassic with Sabian cymbals (including a Vault hi-hat), Evans heads, and a Czarcie Kopyto direct drive double kick pedal. Czarcie Kopyto translates to the Devil’s Hoof in Polish. I learned that when Xandria drummer Gerit Lamm did a Rigged feature for us recently. Score one for edutainment.

But come on dude, you also play drums in Paradise Lost, so don’t go all Lars on us and wear the shirt. The only excuse for sporting your own band’s hoodie is if you got wasted and puked all over your own clothes, necessitating that you rummage through the merch bin for a replacement. Or maybe you had some wild sex but were chased out naked after a zany comedic misunderstanding. But were you copulating rom-com style in the studio? I suppose it’s possible, yet somehow I doubt it.