Take, for instance, the tale of Duke Nukem Forever. Stuck in developmental hell for years, the fourth installment of the much-loved series was mired by updates and speculations that were aimless. Zero Punctuation mastermind Ben Croshaw created a wildly facetious video review of the game before its release to underscore the problems of Duke Nukem Forever seeing the light of day. He hilariously attested the game would fail to live up to expectations and subsequently poop the bath among its fan base due to the evolution of the gaming world's industry and technology. Long story short, he predicted Duke Nukem Forever to be like telling a kid with BPD to find a drum of gasoline and kill a few hours. As foretold, results weren't too hot.

At The Gates embodies the spirit of the ultimate sacred cow. From "The Red in the Sky is Ours" to "Slaughter of the Soul," each and every release they created holds prodigious worth to specific schools of thought within death metal. Purists consider "The Red in the Sky is Ours" and "With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness" to be two of the few compositional zeniths of the sound (myself included), while "Terminal Spirit Disease" and "Slaughter of the Soul" were pivotal in molding the melodic death metal identity, and helped inspire a new generation of bands. How many groups have had that degree of influence on such a vast magnitude? Very few come to mind.

When At The Gates started touring again, the guys constantly shot down the idea of making a new album; they were cognizant of their legacy, and had no intention to tarnish it. The preserve-the-legacy thing was something to admire, really. One of my favorite bands, taking the high road; a clean slate, never to be ruined by that brown log floating in their pristine little pond. Much like the release of Duke Nukem Forever, I'm left wondering why "At War with Reality" exists. What else did At The Gates have left to prove, other than to make a new album just for the sake of making a new album? The whole idea just seemed redundant.

For one, the influence of "Slaughter of the Soul" has been violated and bastardized by hundreds of bands since 1996. Any criteria At The Gates used from their most renowned album would come up lacking and bare; the well had been tapped long ago. The odd rhythms and complex structures of Alf Svensson's work in the band (jokingly referred to as 'Alf the Gates') were out of question, because (a) Svensson was not involved in At The Gates' resurgence, and (b) the other members wrote off most of his work, often calling his twisting compositions of the group's early era 'pretentious.' Also, members of At The Gates went on to form The Haunted, so there's strike number three. It smelled like they were doomed from the start to unleash a product of mediocrity, nothing close to their former glories.

On the other hand, if they released an album that kicked ass, I would have gladly ate my words. But it doesn't sound like that's the case, because "At War with Reality" is dull. Not a colossal turd, but it fails to conjure the sense of innovation and mastery that At The Gates' prior efforts captured effortlessly. It falls mostly under the blanket of The Haunted's straightforward style of melodic death metal with some parts that might have had a place on a trimmed version of "Slaughter of the Soul" or "Terminal Spirit Disease." As exciting as The Haunted, as insipid as The Haunted, and packed with a special fragrance that smells like The Haunted.

Maybe an album like this would have worked back in the late 1990s when this sound was still developing. The melodic death metal identity has long since been ravished by countless projects, but "At War with Reality" never got the memo; it kicks down the door to the party ten years too late. The integration of candid death/thrash metal riffs stripped out of The Haunted's modus operandi makes a startling amount of these tunes uneventful from start to finish. The fact that these straightforward, predictable sequences are not just plentiful but the spine of the album shows the creative ingenuity of prior At The Gates opuses squandered for a corner-cutting songwriting template of little interest. They don't bother to heave out a frenetic melodic death lashing like "Suicide Nation" or even a by-the-numbers replication of older days, but instead stick to bland mid-paced sections with bits of At The Gates-styled riffs and parts thrown in here and there. "At War with Reality" shows this once-great band playing armchair quarterback. Woefully humdrum and creatively bankrupt.

The biggest letdown is that few sections appear that actually sound like At The Gates, oddly. Tomas Lindberg's barks, which thankfully have not changed one bit, appear to be the only part of At The Gates not to have its costs cut. "Death and the Labyrinth" and the title track act as the leadoff tunes by setting the stage, but they completely fail to make an impression. The aggressive use of melodic death metal to kick things off is like a street magician pulling a quarter out of a middle-aged man's ear and expecting him to be amazed; these are second-rate copies of "Slaughter of the Soul" glued to The Haunted's straightforward banality. I'm being generous by calling them mediocre.

The whole record is almost entirely devoid of memorable riffs, save for a few up-tempo bits (especially "Eater of Gods") and a handful of mid-paced parts. I can't recall a fragment of "The Circular Ruins" through "Order from Chaos" without hearing the songs themselves; they have no gripping power whatsoever. The second half is a little more tolerable, because some of these tunes finally begin to wake up and shake off the cobwebs. "Eater of Gods," as mentioned, is a much-needed pocket of fire, and "The Book of Sand (The Abomination)" sticks more to the melodic elements of prior At The Gates works than most of "At War with Reality." Sad part is, these songs are fine, not exceptional. The rest ranges from forgettable to boring with a common theme of the group sleepwalking through it all.