In glancing at our extensive previous commentary going back to 2015 on the music of Gateway, the most commonly occurring words have been variants on “titanic”, “obliterating”, “pestilential”, “skull-cleaving”, “abysmal”, “mauling”, “blood-congealing”, and “ghastly”. The phrase “appalling and abominable” popped up as well. There was also this pungent passage from our review of the band’s 2018 EP Boundless Torture, which still rings true:

Within the more heartless and slaughtering corners of the extreme metal underground there has been a decades-long competition to reach the deepest, coldest caverns of devastation and despair, and to weaponize the horrors found within the crushing pressures of those abyssal chasms. The Belgian one-man death/doom band Gateway has been one of the more dedicated and successful combatants in that race to the bottom.

But hey, as nightmarish as Gateway‘s music has been, it still gets its massive meat-hooks in the head. We even named the 12 1/2 minute title track from Gateway‘s 2021 EP Flesh Reborn to our list of that year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It does take a special kind of talent to scare the shit out of listeners yet leave them compelled to continue listening again and again.

And now we have new Gateway nightmares to indulge, thanks to the album Galgendood that Transcending Obscurity Records will release on July 5th. The label promises “a catastrophe of biblical proportions”. We would expect nothing less. Continue reading »