A few weeks ago, I was very fortunate to have attended a theater screening of At the Gates’ full-length documentary, Under a Serpent Sky, which is bundled as part of the three-disc box set The Flames of the End (Earache Records).

Not long after the lights dimmed and Under a Serpent Sky started rolling, I knew I was in for a cool ride. Directed by guitarist Anders Björler, the documentary touches on just about everything that you’ve ever wanted to know about this band. It even includes footage taken from rare home videos and the band’s personal pictures.

This insanely thorough film includes interviews every band member (one the film’s most interesting parts is hearing the band discuss the [pre-At the Gates band] Grotesque days and what it was like growing up as one of only a handful of metalheads in the Gothenburg area), but there are also interviews with a lot of key players in the Swedish death metal scene, including Uffe Cederlund from Entombed/Disfear, producer Frederik Nordström, and Mikael Stanne from Dark Tranquillity. In terms of giving fans a proper view of how one of Sweden’s greatest bands and scenes came into existence, there’s just nothing out there that rivals this kind of coverage.

Watch a preview for the DVD here:

Due to the length of the film, we were not shown the epilogue. It was summed up as a “What are they up to now?’ kind of feature. I’m extremely curious to see it once I get my hands on the actual product, though I more or less know what everyone is up to these days…what can I say, I’m a shameless fanboy.

Prior to the screening, I had an opportunity to sit down with Anders for a little chat at his hotel. In the following interview, he talks about the making of this feature, and gives us his final thoughts about the band. By Henry Yuan

The Flames of the End box set not only has the Wacken Open Air performance, but it also contains a full-length feature documentary. Would you say that this is a celebration of At the Gates as opposed to just being the “final nail in the coffin”?

ANDERS BJÖRLER When we originally talked about this, the decision was to document this story as a present to ourselves. As the project prolonged, I noticed it got bigger and bigger. Everyone soon got involved and it became a giant puzzle, where we were trying to figure out the past and going through hundreds of pictures. We were basically living in the past for a while. We ended up doing some reunion shows and after we got back, I worked on the film for four or five months straight to put the finishing touches on it. It was then when I realized this was an actual feature-length documentary film. I mean, it’s not like a real documentary film, but we’re all very proud of this.

What was the actual process like of putting together the documentary? What was going through your head when you came across some of the footage?

BJÖRLER I had some old stuff from the very beginning. My father had this old VHS camera recorder, you know, the “big boat” [laughs], which he gave to me and I started filming as early as 1989. I started filming Grotesque [the pre-At the Gates band featuring vocalist Tomas Lindberg] and various shows around the Gothenburg area. Even though I had some of this old stuff, I needed help from people all over the world. I mean, I actually got footage from a guy in Jordan. It was footage from a Grotesque rehearsal, which was originally shot by me, but I lent it to someone in the past. 20 years later, he has that copy. I don’t know, but he had it [laughs].

That’s the thing. These videos were traded in the tape trading scene and the bootleg scene, especially the concert footage. Two guys from New York actually filmed the show at the Wetlands in 1996. I mean, I had a lot of footage and pictures but I had to get in touch with everyone from the scene to get more and to get some stories. Of course, you don’t remember everything. [At the Gates vocalist] Tomas [Lindberg] had a lot of ideas and got very involved and we had different members in the past… it’s been such a long time.

What made you and the rest of the band decide to reform the band for these series of shows? Was there any specific event that triggered this decision?

BJÖRLER We had talked about it in the past, actually. We started talking about it in 2002. Adrian [Erlandsson, drummer] was tied up with Cradle of Filth at the time. He wasn’t allowed to do it, basically. When he got out of Cradle, things were looking better. We [along with brother/bassist Jonas Björler] had a very tight touring schedule lined up with the Haunted and Tomas was in school at the time studying to become a teacher and he had other bands on the side.

Since I was the one who quit the band in ’96, I wanted to give the guys—and myself—a proper ending. When I left the band, it was kind of abrupt. So in 2007, I started the initiative to reform. The main thing about this was to plan ahead of time. In the summer of ’07, I immediately asked everyone to do this – exactly one year prior. Everyone had a lot of time to plan it.

At the Gates was a band that progressed with every album, as no album sounded alike. Had you and Jonas [Björler] remained in the band and a follow-up to Slaughter of the Soul was written, what would you say it would sound like?

BJÖRLER I mean, it would be foolish to speculate but I would say it would be in the lines of our own style where we started with The Haunted, Made Me Do It or even One Kill Wonder with songs like “Hollow Ground” or “Shadow World”. The riffing is very similar to At the Gates. Of course, Tomas would have his vocals over it.

Along with Dark Tranquility, the both of you are considered to be the fathers of the “Gothenburg Scene”. What is, in your opinion, the “Gothenburg Sound”?

BJÖRLER It’s actually a term that was coined later on. We never heard about it when we were a band. I think the term came to existence in ’98 or ’99, which generally described the new music scene in Gothenburg, which included the first bands like In Flames, Dark Tranquility and At The Gates and second wave would be bands like Soilwork, and so on.

Let’s talk about the band’s early days. How did At the Gates form and what was the atmosphere like during those days?

BJÖRLER We formed when Grotesque split up. Tomas, Alf [Svensson, guitarist] and myself went one way and Kristian [Wahlin, guitarist] went on to form Liers In Wait. We became At the Gates.

At the time, Alf was a great songwriter and had very weird influences, like opera, classical, [Karlheinz] Stockhausen… just very extreme tastes. He wanted to experiment a lot with the music. Being a young musician myself, I was very inspired by his songwriting. We never really liked the traditional death metal of those days, you know, bands like Benediction and Suffocation – stuff like that. We were more into the technical thrash metal stuff like Atheist. We wanted to experiment. We were very young and very eager to please and impress people with 150 riffs in each song with very complicated song structures. We were very focused on making hard-to-get music.

Alf left the band in ’93 and Tomas, Jonas and I thought it would be really foolish to try and copy Alf. That was when we tried to adopt a different style with a more basic song structure. We wanted to incorporate more of the bands we grew up listening to; like Iron Maiden with the dual guitar style stuff. I guess you can consider At the Gates to have two different eras and as two different bands: one with Alf and one with Martin [Larsson, guitarist].

Terminal Spirit Disease was a bit of a departure from the band’s two previous albums and, in my opinion, was an introduction to the Slaughter sound. It combined the progressive and dynamic edge of the past albums with more straightforward, almost traditional heavy metal-like, structures. Do you recall any specific goals you and/or the band had? What were you trying to achieve at that point?

BJÖRLER We were really eager to release something following the departure of Alf. We were playing crappy tours where we would play to like 50 people and we wanted to show the world that we were a new band. We had six songs written and ready to be recorded but the label [Peaceville Records] said, no, we want a full-length. What happened was we did those six songs and three live songs from a tour we did with Carcass were added. I don’t particularly like those live songs and I much rather wanted to have a mini-album or an EP.

From a purely, historical standpoint, Slaughter of the Soul was an album that stood out all on its own. At that time, death metal had already begun to decline in popularity and in creativity, black metal’s controversy took over the Scandinavian region, grunge was at an all-time high and your peers still had a bit of the dated sound. At the end of the Slaughter sessions, did you personally feel there was something special at hand?

BJÖRLER Actually, when we were first listening back to the final mix at the listening party, I didn’t like it so much [laughs]. It eventually grew on me, though. When you record an album, you hear the songs with all of the compressors off and with basically no EQ, which gives it a more natural and raw sound. When you mix an album, the compressors and limiters are on and things get to sound more mechanical and industrial. When we recorded the album, I thought it sounded like Kyuss or something, with the big drums and whatnot. It was very organic. However, it grew on me after a couple of months but immediately after mixing, not so much.

Your final North American tour featured Darkest Hour, a band who is considered to be a pioneer in the modern American metal scene – better known as metalcore. Bands like Light This City, God Forbid and Unearth have all cited Slaughter as a major influence in their sound. How do you feel about the impact of that particular album?

BJÖRLER A lot of people have told me that we have made an impact on their music, especially the Massachusetts/Connecticut scene. I can’t relate to it but when the guys from Killswitch Engage or Phil LeBonte from All That Remains tell me how much they’ve been influenced by it, I have to take their word for it.

We were so focused on touring and a couple of months later, and the band was no more. I think that left a bigger legacy somehow. I think there’s something special when bands break up. Their unavailability makes them special. I can’t describe it but it happens to every band that breaks up.

As you and the remaining members moved on from At The Gates to your own bands, did you feel any doubt or regret in your mind about your decision?

BJÖRLER I never felt any regret quitting At the Gates because I thought Slaughter of the Soul was the perfect album to end on. I wanted to do something else musically, other than melodic death metal. The thing I do regret is that I left the band abruptly, which is why we are doing this reunion – as friends. It’s not for the music – it’s for us.

It kind of felt like going back 12 years in a time machine. I mean, getting back together felt the same but playing to so many people was completely new. We played to, at most, 300 people with Morbid Angel or Napalm Death back then at the underground clubs and if we did our own headline shows there would be 50-100 people. Of course, getting up on stage at Wacken and playing to 60,000 people is just incredible. Plus, it’s great to see all of the 12/13-year old kids screaming when they were hardly born when the band was around. It just shows the kind of impact the band has made on the scene today.

Since you’ve kinda come full circle with the release of this DVD, do you have any new thoughts about At the Gates’ legacy?

BJÖRLER I’m very proud of all the albums the band has done and I’m very happy that there’s still a buzz about them. It’s just incredible that people are still interested in At the Gates.