The Swedish melodic death-metal group At The Gates are maybe my favorite active band in the world today. Their 1993 and ’95 LPs — Terminal Spirit Disease and Slaughter Of The Soul, respectively — are just about peerless. I can’t recommend them highly enough. Slaughter, in fact, was such a masterpiece that the band split up soon after its release: The pressure to top it was too great, and the chances of doing so, just about zero. However, they reformed in the aughts for some live shows, and in 2014, released the follow-up to Slaughter, At War With Reality, which absolutely lived up to the band’s insanely high standards. Last year they started teasing a new one — code name: TDFTNI — which landed at #57 on our list of 2018’s most anticipated albums, but is easily in my personal top 3. And today, they announce all the details of the album’s release.

First off, the complete title is To Drink From The Night Itself. Second, the album will be released on May 18 via Century Media. Third, that is the album cover above — created by Costin Chioreanu — and it is so fucking badass. That is easily the best album cover At The Gates have ever made. (This is, unfortunately, an incredibly low bar, as At The Gates are responsible for some of the worst album covers I’ve ever seen, but this one is killer by any standard.)

At The Gates frontman Tomas Lindberg shared some thoughts on the album’s cover on the band’s Facebook. In brief, he says, “The inspiration for the actual front cover piece is taken from the Pergamon Altar, on display at the Pergamon museum in Berlin. It is of course linked closely to the concept that the whole record is based upon, but more on that later.”

Later can’t come soon enough. The band also shared the tracklist for To Drink From The Night Itself, which I’ve included below. But before that, I’m dropping in some old songs — “The Swarm” (from TSD), “Blinded By Fear” (from Slaughter), and “The Circular Ruins” (from At War With Reality) in case you’ve never heard At The Gates. These are three of my favorite songs in the world, and maybe they’ll give you some idea why I’m so stoked for To Drink From The Night Itself. You should be stoked too!

To Drink From The Night Itself tracklist:

01. “Der Widerstand”
02. “To Drink From The Night Itself”
03. “A Stare Bound In Stone”
04. “Palace Of Lepers”
05. “Daggers Of Black Haze”
06. “The Chasm”
07. “In Nameless Sleep”
08. “The Colours Of The Beast”
09. “A Labyrinth Of Tombs”
10. “Seas Of Starvation”
11. “In Death They Shall Burn”
12. “The Mirror Black”

To Drink From The Night Itself is out 5/18 via via Century Media Records.