At the Gates Release Dark New Song ‘The Paradox’

Just over one month out from the release of The Nightmare of Being, melodic death metal icons At the Gates have debuted the new track “The Paradox.”

The sinister new song is the second single to be released off the record and follows the equally dark “Spectre of Extinction.” Both tracks appear at the top of the 10-track album and it’s clear that At the Gates are navigating some new sonic territory across their latest pair of singles, placing emphasis on an overwhelmingly foul atmosphere, even utilizing some choir elements in the latest offering.

Listen to “The Paradox” toward the bottom of the page and read the lyrics (via Genius) below as well.

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“The overall theme deals with the topic of pessimism, and I have been diving deep down in pessimistic philosophers,” frontman Tomas Lindberg, who we interviewed about also being a schoolteacher, previously said of the themes present on The Nightmare of Being.

“Trying to understand this way of looking at the world. It is not a negative album, more a gateway into new ideas for me personally, trying out different perspectives. You could call the album an introduction to pessimism as a concept, I guess. It is a very dark album, but not negative,” he continued.

The Nightmare of Being comes out on July 2 on Century Media. Pre-order your copy here.

At the Gates, “The Paradox” Lyrics

Prodigious dreams, entangled and black
Coiled in the corners of life
Hallucinations, engraved in our bones
Futile, monotonous lives

The poison circle, eyes within eyes
How black our madness to be
Spectral salvation, unfurling itself
Through labyrinthian nights

To carry these dead notes
As we stare into the abyss
Our ruin, twisted and black
Into the starving void

Dehumanization of our art and culture
Parent of horrors to be
Mankind is nothing but self-conscious flesh
The triumph of our own deceit

The structures thеy now crumble
The fevеred liturgy
Black with the scars of madness
We hide within our crypts

Through mad winds of terror
Dreams are disturbed
In pulse after heaven-wide pulse
Older than darkness, colors unknown
Within the pit of death

Heroic dreams now trampled
By figures in rust-colored robes
A region, illuminated
Into the nuclear dawn

The structures they now crumble
The fevered liturgy
Black with the scars of madness
We hide within our crypts

And as all hope turns to black
Into the dreamless night
As all hope turns to black
Of pessimism and paradox

No hope – all black
No hope – all black

And as all hope turns to black
Into the dreamless night
As all hope turns to black
Of pessimism and paradox

Of pessimism and paradox
Of pessimism and paradox

At the Gates, “The Paradox”