Swedish melodic death metal pioneers AT THE GATES will release The Flames Of The End, a brand new three-disc DVD set, on February 22nd throughout Europe, February 26th in Sweden and April 6th in North America through Earache Records.

At The Gates released its definitive album, Slaughter Of The Soul in 1995, before touring the world and abruptly disbanding. Members of the band went on to play major roles in other notorious metal acts such as THE HAUNTED and CRADLE OF FILTH, before reforming for a one-off tour in 2008.

Now, to celebrate At The Gates' massively influential career and historical reunion tour, the band will be releasing The Flames Of The End, an extensive, in-depth and definitive three-disc DVD set.

BraveWords.com caught up with At The Gates guitarist Anders Björler and drummer Adrian Erlandsson recently and posed the following questions about the new set among other topics:

BraveWords.com: How did you end up with so much footage from the band’s early days?

Björler: “All the really old footage is actually from Alf and I was so lucky to get it because it was one week prior to the deadline. I texted him like a maniac and sent him emails and we didn’t make contact until one week before the deadline. But yeah, I got a lot of stuff and I managed to put it all into the film. There was a lot of stuff, like the rehearsal footage and the road footage.”

Erlandsson: “It was pretty amazing to see it. I’d never seen most of that stuff. Or any of it, in fact!”

Björler: “It was pretty uncommon to have a video camera back then. It’s pretty good quality, a lot of that footage.”

BraveWords.com: Is it a weird feeling looking at that footage now, all these years later?

Björler: “It’s a trip back in time. It’s pretty nostalgic. When you develop the photos, it takes you deeper and deeper and it gave me lots of new ideas.”

Erlandsson: “It was really, really emotional, some of that stuff. There’s a bit when we stopped at a service station when we were on tour, and it just came back to me. I would never have remembered that otherwise. Seeing it again was amazing.”

Björler: “It’s only 18 years ago!”

Erlandsson: “That’s the time it takes for someone to become a grown-up!”

BraveWords.com: Did you plan to do a documentary before the reunion began?

Björler: “No, it was Adrian’s idea, actually. I called him up and he said ‘We should do a DVD!’”

Erlandsson: “When I said that, the idea was more to do a live DVD. But he came up with the idea of doing a documentary and as we played the gigs the live footage was coming, and then he interviewed the people we knew back then and it grew from there…”

Björler: “I wanted to limit the interviews to people who actually played with us. So it’s Shane Embury, who played with Tompa in Lock-Up and the core of people that we knew back then.”

BraveWords.com: When you decided to reunite, did any of you realise how influential and popular At The Gates had become in the years since the original split?

Björler: “We didn’t know that was the case, to be honest.”

BraveWords.com: Did any of the band have any reservations about getting back together?

Björler: “No, there was a feeling that people were begging for it to happen, especially Martin who was not very involved in music. He’d done a progressive band and a hardcore band, but that was it. He was dying to get out. We were pretty fortunate, the rest of us, to get out with other bands. Adrian had Cradle Of Filth, me and Jonas had The Haunted and, of course, Tompa had numerous bands. Everybody was in on the idea. We decided to compress the whole thing to one summer and that made it easier for everyone to accept, because it felt right. It fitted in before we started on the next Haunted album. Everybody was very positive when I called them up. I was basically on tour, in France somewhere, and I spoke with Jonas and then called Adrian up and it went from there. Everyone was very positive.”

Erlandsson: “You know the Marlborough Head pub in London? They used to play At The Gates on the jukebox and I’d always come out and text Björler or ring him and leave a voicemail…”

Björler: “You did that, like, 20 times!”

Erlandsson: “And I’d say ‘Come on, let’s do some gigs or just one gig!’ But I never expected it. Just for ourselves…we had no idea what it was going to be like.”

Björler: “In the back of my mind, I always thought that Adrian was tied up with Cradle Of Filth.”

Erlandsson: “I would never have been able to do this had I still been in Cradle Of Filth.”

BraveWords.com: Did you get a lot of offers to reform over the years?

Björler: “Not really. People basically accepted the disbandment and no one bothered to ask. We did get asked when we were in the States with The Haunted in 2007. We thought about doing a tour with At The Gates and The Haunted together, but we said ‘No! Never!’ Maybe that set something off within me…I don’t know.”

Erlandsson: “I’m pretty sure that there were rumours going around at times, but I don’t remember receiving any offers.”

Björler: “Maybe one or two agents asked about it, but there were no real offers.”

BraveWords.com: The end of the band, when Anders quit, was quite sudden and unexpected and seemed to shock the rest of the band. Did you feel that you owed it to the others to create an opportunity for the band to say a proper farewell?

Björler: “That’s the big reason for me to call up the guys. That was the incentive for me.”

Erlandsson: “Everybody else wanted it.”

Björler: “Yeah, I knew that everybody else would accept the idea. It helped that we decided to do it one year before it happened, so that everyone could plan.”

Erlandsson: “With him and Jonas having The Haunted, everyone else in that band’s finances depends on what they do, so if they dropped out of action for eight months, it was going to be no good financially for the others.”

Björler: “But we kept on going in between the At The Gates shows anyway! We did five or six festivals that summer.”

Erlandsson: “Yeah, but I think it could’ve been a somewhat sensitive point for the others in The Haunted. When the band first started and I was in the band, there were always people shouting for At The Gates songs and The Haunted has obviously moved on now and become its own entity. I think some members were maybe worried that At The Gates would take off again and become a band again, but we always said that it would definitely not happen.”

Björler: “I have a pretty story about that, actually. We played a show in Carlstadt, Sweden and someone was always shouting ‘At The Gates!’ all the time. So we said ‘Stop it!’ you know? Then we announced the reunion shows and played the shows and since then we’ve never had anyone shouting ‘At The Gates!’ anymore. Problem solved! It’s a drunk thing. It was always someone who was so drunk they couldn’t stand up and they get confused about the two bands.”

Erlandsson: “When we played in Gothenburg with Paradise Lost last year, I was sitting down talking to Amber about something, not even something gig-related, and this guy comes up and just screams ‘At The Gates!’ in my face. There was no conversation, just ‘At The Gaaaaaaates!’ It was very strange.”

BraveWords.com: People seem to have the false impression that At The Gates were a huge band, selling out big venues, but the documentary confirms that you never really reached that level and really had to work hard to keep the show on the road…

Björler: “I don’t know why people have that perception. We used to play to two or three hundred people. We played in bigger venues when we toured with Morbid Angel. We felt they were the biggest thing in the death metal market, that’s for sure.”

Erlandsson: “Some of the biggest shows with Morbid Angel in America would’ve been Harpo’s and the show in San Francisco…”

Björler: “But those shows weren’t sold out. That’s why, with the reunion, we were overwhelmed by the response. We were in awe, that the fans had remembered us, and that there were all these kids that were 15 or 16 years old and they knew all the lyrics. We’ve created a legacy somehow.”

Erlandsson: “It was amazing at the Wacken gig. I was completely floored that we got into the position that we did. Considering that I play with Jeff Walker in another band, it was considerably pleasing to go on stage after CARCASS! He was saying ‘Why is At The Gates going on after us?’ Ha ha! But it was a very humbling experience. And after that show it was possibly the most drunk I’ve ever been in my life. I was on all fours in the backstage area and Björler and Amber were shouting at me.”

Björler: “I was the designated driver and I wanted to leave a one o’clock in then morning, but Adrian kept us there until four a.m.! He was just lying on the floor. That was when I decided I wanted to quit again! Ha ha ha!”

Erlandsson: “Wacken was definitely a highlight, but playing the Scandinavian dates was special too, and Gothenburg especially.”

Björler: “…along with Tokyo and New York.”

Erlandsson: “Tokyo was unreal. Obviously we never got to go to Japan before. I was pretty hungover from the night before when we played and I was thinking ‘Wow, this is a pretty big place!’ I texted with my brother and he said that he’d played there with Arch Enemy and never quite sold it out. We played there and it wasn’t sold out, but it was pretty packed.”

BraveWords.com: The DVD is a three-disc extravaganza, so how did you choose the rest of the stuff on there?

Björler: “The Wacken gig was one of the best shows we did. One of the best ever. So we had to use that. We didn’t change anything at all. No overdubs. We also filmed the Swedish shows, Stockholm and Gothenburg, but Tomas wasn’t very happy with his vocals...and then, of course, Adrian fucked up when Jörgen (Sandström; VICIOUS ART/PROJECT HATE MCMXCIX) and his stage dive and fell onto the barrier. Everyone was standing there looking perplexed and staring down and Adrian was so taken by it, he played a mistake. We have all the footage still, so we will review it all in a year or two, but we thought that Wacken was a better show with more cameras, so we went with that. It was more professional, basically. Then there’s the third disc, which for me is just a bonus disc. I was struggling with some of the old material because the sound quality and picture quality was very low, but we got some good stuff and it all worked out.”

BraveWords.com: How long did the documentary take to put together?

Björler: “The documentary must have been about two-and-a-half years in total. I worked full-time on it from April to November 2009. That was the major work, and all the interviews. I did the interview with myself too. That was just me and a video camera. I thought it was good to do, to get a better understanding of what happened and some information on everything. It was a pretty basic interview to do. Then I did the stuff with Tomas and then sorted out the titles and everything else. We missed some opportunities to do the interview with Adrian, so in the end we did it at a summer festival in Spain, at the hotel. He was about to go on stage with Paradise Lost and he was very stressed and preparing for the show, and we did the interview in 45 minutes in the hotel. Every interview was kind of like that. Everything was done on the fly, almost.”

BraveWords.com: Do you think you were a better band second time around?

Björler: “I think so. We never sounded as good as we did on the reunion tour.”

Erlandsson: “It seemed like most people thought that Wacken was a great gig. When I heard the audio back I had to switch it off, but Björler told me he thought it was really good! Ha ha!”

BraveWords.com: So is this definitely the end of At The Gates? Is there no way that you will be persuaded to do more shows in the future?

Björler: “One thing we know for sure is that we will never record any new music. Maybe we’ll play at someone’s wedding one day.”

Housed in a deluxe six-panel DVD digipak with a 40-page colour booklet, The Flames Of The End will include three indispensable DVDs:

Disc 1: Under A Serpent Sun - The Story Of At The Gates

A brand new documentary with a running time of over two hours, detailing the band's entire career with exclusive interviews and footage, filmed and directed by guitarist Anders Björler.

Introduction & Opening Titles

Reunion: From Vision to Reality

The Early Years Part 1: From Nursery Rhymes to Death Metal

The Early Years Part 2: The Schillerska / Billdal Connection

The Early Years Part 3: The Grotesque / At the Gates Transition

The Early Years Part 4: Creativity Unbound

Gardens Of Grief

The Red In The Sky Is Ours

Reunion: Sweden Rock 2008

With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness

Exit Alf - Enter Martin

Reunion: Graspop 2008

Terminal Spirit Disease

Reunion: Ruis Rock 2008

Slaughter Of The Soul

Reunion: America re-visited

Reunion: San Antonio, TX 2008

Exit Anders

Reunion: Bloodstock 2008

Reunion: The Past is Alive

'Beyond the Gates

Credits

Interview with Tomas in Chicago 1996 (Deleted Scenes)

Adrian, The Prankster (Deleted Scenes)

The Tokyo Experience (Deleted Scenes)

Elvis Has Left the Building (Deleted Scenes)

European Mini-Tour with Therion 1992 (Deleted Scenes)

Gods of Metal, Italy 2008 (Deleted Scenes)

Tompa cleaning out the trailer (Deleted Scenes)

'Kingdom Gone' (Music Video)

'The Burning Darkness' (Music Video)

'Terminal Spirit Disease' (Music Video)

'Blinded By Fear' (Music Video)

Disc 2: Purgatory Unleashed - Live at Wacken

A 75-minute live set from the band's reunion set at the Wacken Open air festival in 2008 in front of 100,000 people - professionally shot with multiple cameras with sound mixed by Tue Madsen)

'Intro (backstage)'

'Slaughter Of The Soul'

'Cold'

'Terminal Spirit Disease'

'Raped By the Light Of Christ'

'Under A Serpent Sun'

'Windows'

'World Of Lies'

'The Burning Darkness'

'The Swarm'

'Forever Blind'

'Nausea'

'The Beautiful Wound'

'Unto Others'

'All Life Ends'

'Need'

'Blinded By Fear'

'Suicide Nation'

'Kingdom Gone'

Disc 3: Only the Dead Are Smiling

26 rare and archive live performances of the band playing in locations around the globe from 1991 to 2008.

'Slaughter Of The Soul' (Wetlands, New York, USA March 7, 1996)

'Cold' (Wetlands, New York, USA March 7, 1996)

'The Swarm' (Wetlands, New York, USA March 7, 1996)

'Blinded by Fear' (Thirsty Whale, Rivergrove, IL, USA, March 10, 1996)

'Suicide Nation' (Thirsty Whale, Rivergrove, IL, USA, March 10, 1996)

'Under a Serpent Sun' (Thirsty Whale, Rivergrove, IL, USA, March 10, 1996)

'Suicide Nation' (Ruisrock, Turku, Finland, July 4, 2008)

'Raped By The Light Of Christ' (Ruisrock, Turku, Finland, July 4, 2008)

'Windows' (Ruisrock, Turku, Finland, July 4, 2008)

'World Of Lies' (Ruisrock, Turku, Finland, July 4, 2008)

'Nausea' (Ruisrock, Turku, Finland, July 4, 2008)

'Slaughter Of The Soul' (Graspop Metal Meeting, Dessel, Belgium, June 29, 2008)

'Cold' (Graspop Metal Meeting, Dessel, Belgium, June 29, 2008)

'Terminal Spirit Disease' (Graspop Metal Meeting, Dessel, Belgium, June 29, 2008)

'The Beautiful Wound' (Graspop Metal Meeting, Dessel, Belgium, June 29, 2008)

'The Burning Darkness' (Witchwood, Manchester UK, February 5, 1996)

'Through Gardens Of Grief' (Factory, Eskilstuna, Sweden, April 20, 1991)

'All Life Ends' (Factory, Eskilstuna, Sweden, April 20, 1991)

'City Of Screaming Statues' (Factory, Eskilstuna, Sweden, April 20, 1991)

'Slaughter Of The Soul' (Studio Coast, Tokyo, Japan, May 11, 2008)

'Cold' (Studio Coast, Tokyo, Japan, May 11, 2008)

'Under A Serpent Sun' (Studio Coast, Tokyo, Japan, May 11, 2008)

'Slaughter Of The Soul' (Irving Plaza, New York, USA, July 9, 2008)

'Need' (The Abyss, Houston, TX, USA, March 17, 1996)

'Neverwhere' (Gagarin 205, Athens, Greece, September 21, 2008)

'Kingdom Gone' (Gagarin 205, Athens, Greece, September 21, 2008)

Watch the video trailer for the DVD below.