In 2026, Swedish death metal legends At The Gates will release a brand new album, The Ghost of a Future Dead. The intended follow-up to 2021’s wildly adventurous The Nightmare of Being, the Gothenburg crew’s seventh studio album has now become a
magnificent, emotionally turbocharged epitaph to frontman Tomas Lindberg, who tragically passed away in September 2025. An absolute titan of underground music, Lindberg completed work on vocals for the new record before entering hospital for vital
surgery at the beginning of 2024. Meanwhile, after six years away, guitarist Anders Björler rejoined the band in 2022, returning to the same line-up that recorded certified classic Slaughter of the Soul nearly three decades earlier: Tomas Lindberg, Anders Björler,
bassist Jonas Björler, drummer Adrian Erlandsson and guitarist Martin Larsson.
 
“After all that time away from the band, it started to sound like a fun thing to me again,” admits Anders. “We did the Damnation Festival in the UK, and then the In Flames tour in Europe, and everyone was pretty excited about me coming back and working on
a new album. We had some festival shows and then started making plans. Tomas started writing some lyrics, and in the spring of 2023 we started making some music. We were working on that for six months, but then Tomas was diagnosed in December 2023,
when we’d booked a studio for February. That was a major blow for everybody.”
 
Despite their frontman’s health battles, At The Gates were able to finish work on demos for the new album, including a complete set of vocal takes for the new songs from Lindberg. Firmly in the creative flow, the band made the shrewd decision to keep their new album plans on track, and entered Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden, with producer Jens Bogren in the New Year.

“Tomas completed the last songs in January 2024, the day before he went into hospital,” says Anders. “We started to record the album, his surgery went well and we were in contact the whole time when we were in the studio. He was very excited to hear
everything. We hadn’t really talked about a blueprint for the album, but it was Tomas’ idea, to do something more reminiscent of At War with Reality or Slaughter of the Soul. It’s not that, but in some instances it comes close! We were very focused on doing a very hard album - that was Tomas’ goal. It’s a hard-hitting album.”
 
Tomas Lindberg passed away on September 16, 2025, at the age of 52. What followed was an overwhelming outpouring of appreciation and love from the worldwide metal community and beyond. In the midst of processing such a devastating loss, the
remaining members of At The Gates vowed to complete the musical journey they had been on for the previous 12 months, with Tomas’ blessings and inspirational contributions still ringing in their ears.