It has been reported in the last hour that Tomas Lindberg, frontman of the legendary Swedish melodic death metal band At The Gates, has sadly passed away at the age of 52. The news was reported by Sweden’s equivalent of the BBC, public broadcaster SVT Nyheter.
It had been reported recently that Lindberg was seriously ill, battling adenoid cystic carcinoma – a rare and aggressive form of mouth cancer. At The Gates had previously published an update from Tomas Lindberg’s on his health, and also on their upcoming album back in August, which can be read in full below.
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 eversince 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!
At The Gates, along with their compatriots In Flames and Dark Tranquillity are best known for being the originators of “The Gothenburg Sound”, summarising the brand of melodic death metal that the three Swedish bands played a very prominent role in popularising in the mid 1990’s. Their album Slaughter Of The Soul is heralded as one of the greatest extreme metal albums of the last 30 years, if not all time. At The Gates have been a huge hit at various UK festivals over the last few years, including an iconic headline set on The Dogtooth Stage at Download Festival 2019.
Everyone here at Rock Sins sends their best wishes and condolences to Tomas’s family, friends, band mates and everyone connected with At The Gates.
