As I wrote in the essay that introduced this list, what you got out of At War With Reality was likely commensurate with what you brought into it. If you’d never forgiven the band for parting ways with original guitarist Alf Svensson — and thus making the leap from The Red In The Sky Is Ours and With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness to Terminal Spirit Disease and Slaughter Of The Soul — then you probably still haven’t dropped that grudge. If you resent At The Gates for making a record almost 20 years ago — 1995’s Slaughter Of The Soul — that inspired a bunch of lesser bands to make a bunch of lesser records, then At War With Reality probably didn’t erase that resentment from your memory. For me, Slaughter Of The Soul was a miracle; I had grown up in death metal’s now-classic era, and by 1994, I thought the genre was dead. When I heard Slaughter Of The Soul, I thought I was dreaming — it was like At The Gates had, in one short album, delivered on the promises made by the very best bands of my formative years: Metallica, Kreator, Death, Entombed, Carcass. I was heartbroken to have found it late, after the band had already broken up (which they did in 1996), but I respected their decision to keep their legacy intact, to go out on a classic. When they announced in January of this year that they would be recording a follow-up, I was both exuberant and nauseous. It would not be a disappointment, could not be a disappointment, but if it was a disappointment, I was going to be crushed. I spent just about the whole year wondering what At War With Reality would sound like, and when I finally got my hands on it, I was deliriously happy and hugely relieved. At War With Reality doesn’t sound like Slaughter Of The Soul so much as it does that album’s predecessor, 1994’s Terminal Spirit Disease. That’s not to say it sounds like a 1994 record, but it also doesn’t sound like 2014: Most modern Swedeath has either a deep metalcore groove or a buzzing, retro blast, but At War With Reality is an an agile, bright, clean-sounding album. The guitars sparkle with crystalline detail; Tompa Lindberg’s vocals roar out over a sound that purrs like a Porsche. The songs are built with trademark Swedish efficiency, craft, and care. They were built to last. I look at it this way: At War With Reality isn’t here to contend with 2014; it’s here forever. And if At The Gates go away again, well, they’ve left us with an album that will grow over time, that will sound good in any era, that will sound better, in fact, with each passing year, until it too is simply understood to be a classic. Another one. –Michael [LISTEN]