Today, 21 August 2014 is an enormous day for me. There are 21 years since I discovered this band and even now, when I am writing this, I simply cannot realize that this is really happening… Not even after these months when I was hardly working on this big project in secret. Well, I must write something, even if I am hardly finding my words now. If I knew that this moment will come I would have written the most complete and wonderful presentation of what I felt, what I feel, how I was dreaming this moment, how I never imagined this moment, how I grew up with this band in my ears, how this band remained for all these years like the air for me… I could work on this text for years… But this is the magic of life. This is a dream I believed and still believe in, so much as it became my path. Now, this dream is really happening, it is reality.
Yes, this was the main reason for all my delays lately, as I really needed to be focused 1000% on this project.
This project was extremely stunning but at the same time, it was super-challenging. The concept was so complex, abstract and deep, everything melted in such harmonic poetry. It was indeed a long trip, but it definitely helped me to step further and discover a new level of understanding and visual synthesis. So after so many years, after all these crazy months, all I can say to these 5 magic people is “Thank You”, from the bottom of my heart.
I present you, the cover of an album I am waiting for almost 20 years and I never lost the hope that I will have, someday, the chance to listen to it, not even when the band was split up. So, here it is: the cover of AT THE GATES – “At War With Reality”.
And here is the official statement from Century Media, Tomas Lindberg and Anders Björler :
AT THE GATES, the pioneering band of the “Gothenburg style” melodic death metal sound, are launching more details about their highly anticipated “At War With Reality” comeback album, which will be released on October 27th, 2014 in Europe and October 28th, 2014 in North America via Century Media Records.
Today, AT THE GATES are revealing the front cover artwork (to be seen above!) for “At War With Reality”, which was designed by Costin Chioreanu / twilight13media.com. Chioreanu, who has previously also worked with bands such as ARCH ENEMY, MORGOTH or DARKTHRONE, gave the strong lyrical theme of “At War With Reality” an outstanding conceptual togetherness with the visuals he crafted for this project.
AT THE GATES vocalist and lyricist Tomas Lindberg checked in with the following comment, explaining the album’s theme: “The concept of ‘At War with Reality’ is based on the literary genre called ‘Magic Realism’. The main style within this genre is the notion that ‘reality’ is ever-changing, and needs to be constantly re-discovered and re-conquered. We felt that Costin’s artwork style would be the perfect visual contribution to this album, so he became the natural choice…”
And AT THE GATES guitarist and main songwriter Anders Björler further explained: “I got in touch with Costin a few years back. I was immediately impressed with his dark and original style. He collaborated on some T-shirt designs for AT THE GATES as well as designing the album artwork for my Instrumental Project. We realized pretty early on that his style would accompany the music and the concept perfectly.”