Band reunions aren’t supposed to go like this. Enormously influential Swedish metal greats At The Gates, who broke up in 1996 after the release of their masterpiece Slaughter At The Soul, reassembled in 2007. At first the band just toured, playing big festivals and giving a chance for the people who hadn’t gotten to see them the first time around to get into it. But then At The Gates started recording again, and the band’s new records have pushed their sound forward and deepened their legend. At The Gates aren’t a legacy act now. They’re one of the most exciting metal bands in the world.

At The Gates have already released two awesome post-reunion albums, 2014’s At War With Reality and 2018’s To Drink From The Night Itself. Next month, they’ll drop another new LP called The Nightmare Of Being. I have heard that album, and it rules so hard. The band has already shared the early tracks “Spectre Of Extinction” and “The Paradox,” and now they’ve unleashed a seven-minute monster called “The Fall Into Time.”

“The Fall Into Time” opens with ominous orchestral flourishes, and it builds into a progged-out excursion, but it never loses its primal death metal ferocity. It sounds crazy. Listen for yourself below.

In a press release, frontman Tomas Lindberg Redant says:

As you might have already guessed, this album is our most ambitious effort yet, including a lot of different orchestrations and new takes on arrangements, etc.

This track “The Fall into Time” is one of the centerpieces of the album. It is big, demanding and epic. We have always found it intriguing to compose songs like these; think “Neverwhere,” “Primal Breath,” “The Night Eternal,” and “Daggers Of Black Haze.” It is heavy, mean, and dark, as well as almost cinematic in its thematic approach. I have always said that the At The Gates listener wants to be challenged and that you hopefully all are as curious as we are when it comes to exploring new musical territory. This song is one of those moments.

The Nightmare Of Being is out 7/2 on Century Media.