What is there left to say about an album that has had endless heaps of praise for over 30 years? ‘The Gallery’ is a watershed point for the Swedish ensemble. The band that was writing fairly crude Death Metal not even 5 years prior had written what is still to this day one of the defining works of the Gothenburg scene, part of the big 3 of the genre alongside ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ and ‘The Jester Race’. I love all 3 records, but ‘The Gallery’ is head and shoulders the most compositionally sophisticated.
Up until that point the band had shown the desire to push the boundaries of what Death Metal could offer, yet sometimes coming off a bit amateurish and biting off more than they could chew. This was no longer the case here as the band finally merged their forward-thinking vision with genuinely catchy and memorable songs. You need not look much further than the opener ‘Punish my Heaven’. In many ways it could be a track that belongs to ‘Skydancer’ – gorgeous and intricate melodic harmonized guitar melodies, sudden tempo shifts, acoustic guitars and even clean vocals. All the dizzying transitions are still there, but everything flows naturally into each other. The song has a clear beginning and end, never feeling clumsy.
And that improved musicianship seeps throughout the rest of the record, giving it an emotional and almost cinematic atmosphere. I love the grandeur of tracks like ‘Edenspring’, the tight melodic leads of ‘The Emptiness from which I Fed’ or the blistering ‘The Dividing Line’. The softer tracks here (the title track and ‘Lethe’) are equally hard hitting in their ability to move you both with its slower tempos and the impressive vocal performance of Stanne.
I’m not sure what else is left to say of this record, other than it’s a well-deserved ending for a band that had worked so hard to push themselves musically. But I also think that compared to the other two big albums in the genre, it’s the one that links best with its past. At the Gates had largely abandoned their labyrinthian songwriting for something more streamlined and visceral. In Flames were opting for catchy melodies with big hooks. Both succeeded tremendously in those respects, but ‘The Gallery’ feels more connected to the feral and off-kilter sounds from which Melodic Death Metal came from. An absolute masterpiece and what marks an important chapter in the band’s history.
