Over at his new site The Number of the Blog, longtime reader groverXIII has observed that the cover of the new Dark Tranquillity album, We are the Void, looks an awful lot like goatse. And while it hadn’t occurred to me before, I think he’s dead-on correct. Check it out:

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Naaaaaahhhhh, I’m just joshin’ ya! It sounds more or less EXACTLY like EVERYTHING they’ve EVER recorded before! But that’s not a bad thing. They’re Dark Tranquillity. They practically invented the Gothenburg sound.

The track is called “Dream Oblivion,” and you can hear it here. It comes off of the band’s new album, We are the Void, which comes out March 2 on Century. I think that bass player who looked like a Martian isn’t in the band anymore, but I’m sure it will rock anyway.

-AR

Based on the e-mails we’ve gotten today, it would seem that a lot of you are frickin’ CRANKY that we’ve made no mention of the fact that Dark Tranquillity are working on a new album, Into the Void. So here’s part 1 of their in-the-studio video series. The album will be out sometime in February or March on Century. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it will sound like European melodic death metal. But I could be wrong. It could be a rap metal album. That would really throw people for a loop, eh?

-AR

The influence and importance of Gothenburg, Swedish’s In Flames is familiar to devoted metalheads but bears repeating to the rest: along with At the Gates and Dark Tranquillity, In Flames pioneered and refined the sound that would later become known as melodic death metal (or “The Gothenburg Sound”), directly influencing hundreds of bands from their genesis in the early ’90s to the myriad metalcore bands that walk the planet today. By combining death metal with Maiden and Judas Priest-influenced guitars and their own astute songwriting sensibility, Stromblad and co. hit a chord that still rings loud today. The band is now nothing short of an international metal sensation and they continue to take their blistering live show on the road year after year. I’d venture to say to that In Flames, through their unique sense of melody, aggression and songcraft, are more directly influential on today’s metal scene than any other band, even the much-celebrated At the Gates.

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Thanks to Crustcake for posting this awesome live video of vintage In Flames — featuring pre-dreads Anders — performing the classic “Behind Space.” The song first appeared on 1994′s Lunar Strain, a landmark melodic death metal album that pre-dated At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul by a year but doesn’t seem to get 1/10th of the credit that album does, perhaps because In Flames never broke up. “Behind Space” was later re-recorded for 1999′s Colony with new vocalist Anders Friden.

The Lunar Strain version of “Behind Space” was performed by session vocalist Mikael Stanne, the Dark Tranquillity guitarist (later vocalist) who Jesper Stromblad tapped to do vocals on the album since In Flames didn’t yet have a vocalist. A year later Stromblad tapped another Dark Tranquillity member, this time their vocalist proper Anders Friden, to join In Flames as a full-time member, resulting in the landmark album The Jester Race. The band re-recorded “Behind Space” for 1999′s Colony, resulting in the version seen here, which is still a staple of their live set even today.

In Flames new album A Sense of Purpose (Koch Records) comes out next week on April 1st. Check out the video for the first single “The Mirror’s Truth.”

-VN

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Gotta love these cool package tours. As you may have heard by now, Arch Enemy will be doing a North American headlining run in the spring, and if the chance to see these cats live isn’t enough to get you excited, well, they’ve thrown in melodic death metal heavyweights Dark Tranquillity, Dino Cazares’ Divine Heresy (read our interview with the band here), and one of our favorite power metal acts, Firewind. In other words, this is going to be an awesome show.Check out a complete tour itinerary after the jump.

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It wouldn’t be considered a stretch to call At the Gates one of the most influential bands on metal today. Without At the Gates (and Dark Tranquillity), there would be no In Flames, The Haunted or Soilwork. And without any of those bands, there would be no Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall, and without those bands there wouldn’t be any of the hundreds of mis-labeled metalcore bands that dominate today’s metal charts. Well, maybe the latter part is a good thing. In any case, they were pretty fuckin’ influential and they’ve just announced that they will be reuniting to tour the 2008 European Summer festival circuit.

Dates at Ruis Rock in Finland, the legendary Wacken Open Air in Germany, and Bloodstock in the UK have been confirmed so far, which leads us to speculate that Axl and I may be blessed with a Download 2008 appearance when we make the trip next summer. A Carcass reunion and At the Gates reunion at the same show? Ya don’t say.

At the Gates consists of Tomas Lindberg (Disfear, The Crown, Lockup) on vocals, Anders Björler (The Haunted) and Martin Larsson on guitar, Jonas Björler (The Haunted) on bass, and Adrian Erlandsson (Brujeria, Cradle of Filth) on drums. I was just listening to Slaughter of the Soul on my iPod on my way to work today; swear to God.

-VN