At The Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg has sadly passed away, one month after the band revealed that he was diagnosed with cancer in December of 2023. As Forbes points out, Swedish news site SVT reported that Lindberg’s family confirmed the sad news. He was 52.
Previously, At The Gates shared this statement from Tomas:
Hello everyone. I guess some of you may have been wondering why it has been so silent on the At the Gates front lately.
Well, in December 2023, I was diagnosed with Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (a cancer in the mouth and pallet) and have since then gone through a lot, it has been a very tough year.
First there was a major surgery, where they took away a big part of the roof of the mouth. This was followed by radiation therapy for two months, and ever since it has been a long hard path towards recovery.
Now, in the beginning of 2025, they have found some remains of the cancer, and it is inaccessible by surgery or radiation.
So, we will see what the next step is, but probably some form of chemo therapy, to keep the cancer in check.
Luckily, we recorded vocals for the demos for the new album before all of this happened. The last version of the vocals, the ones that will end up on the album, were recorded in ONE day, mostly one takes, the DAY before the surgery, just to make sure we HAD the album, so to speak. So the vocals were actually recorded BEFORE the rest of the album…. a bit different, but it felt good to have it done.
We have now decided to not wait any longer to release this new album. We had first planned to wait with the release until we knew if/when I would be able to sing again, and we were able to support the release with shows.
Now when everything about the future is a bit more unsure it feels good to deliver this album.
It is an album that we all are very proud of, and it’s the first time in 10 years that Jonas and I have worked together with Anders writing an albums’ worth of music.
It is a bit more of a return to the “roots”, probably best described as a mix between the two last albums we did with Anders (Slaughter of the Soul and At War with Reality).
Hope you all will enjoy it!
The new At The Gates album mentioned in Tomas’ statement is on the way and we’ll keep you posted as soon as we learn more about that. It will follow 2021’s The Nightmare of Being, and will be the band’s fourth album since reuniting in the 2010s. The final album of the band’s initial run, 1995’s Slaughter of the Soul, is one of the most important melodic death metal albums of all time and its influence spans far and wide.
Rest in peace, Tomas. Your impact will never be forgotten.
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