“Don’t think for a second that you’re not in danger.”
2025 has been a colossal year so far for Louisville, Kentucky’s hardcore death metal darlings Gates to Hell. After a warm reception in the UK in February, they gained a multitude of new fans with their dense and decrepit sound. The band have released their sophomore full-length effort Death Comes To All – an embrace of the macabre, a bargaining with the void waiting for all of us, a grotesque exploration of the fate we all follow. With a cover (created by artist WYRMWALK) brandishing a zombified hand bursting through the soil of a graveyard soaked in an ominous moonlight, the album boasts an epic and innovative take on hardcore, escaping into fantasy.
Continuing to conjure an image created by the artwork, “Rise Again”. launches you straight into the world of the album. The flashes of high pitched guitars come like lightning strikes, breaking up the darkness of the thunderous rampaging drums and harsh, low vocals of lead singer Ryan Storey. After a chaotic breakdown the song increases in intensity as the narrator tells the story of a corpse reanimated, a Frankenstein’s monster-like creature reeling from each stitch into its flesh. The song is somewhat of a mission statement for the record – acting as an introduction to the claustrophobic grave the album violently drags the listener into.
As the album blasts through each short-yet-powerful gut-punch of a track, there are many highlights. One of these is the cascading guitars, like staircase to hell, of “A Summoning”. As “the devil appears before me”, the protagonist of the song descends to their cursed fate after their wrist-slitting demise. The band are not afraid to play into the theatrical, utilising their instruments to paint a vivid soundscape of grotesquerie alongside their graphic and gore-filled lyrics.
Wading further through the record, the listener is treated to moments such as the barrage of sound of the album’s title track. The disorientating tempo changes paired with the infectious distorted riff central to the track manifest a looming presence of death and destruction throughout the song. It is a thick inescapable fog that coats the album, invasively clinging to the listener.
Concluding with a return to the shallow grave the album crawled out of, “Fused With The Soil” infuses horror film-esque scream sound bites and ominous voices with an infectious, fast-paced barrage of heaviness. Although prevalent throughout the album, it is on this track that Storey’s higher screaming vocals really echo that of Chris Motionless’s vocal work on early Motionless in White albums. A familiar and almost nostalgic choice, whether actually an influence or not, is a charming point of interest for a potential listener looking for a sense of familiarity. The song continues to paint the gnarly, worm-infested picture over the course of the album, concluding with an invasive and abrasive warning – “don’t think for a second that you’re not in danger”. All hell breaks loose, guitars, bass and especially drums firing off at all angles, an explosion of noise raining shrapnel onto its captive audience.
This album is the audio equivalent of the looming threat of an early grave, it is the shadow you feel breathing on your back as you walk at night and the weight pushing down on you at night as your dreams are haunted by flashes of violence. The thick wall of sound envelops the listener in the band’s clear, horrific vision. Gates To Hell prove on Death Comes To All that there is room for playfulness and theatricality in modern hardcore, that there is room yet to explore the common death metal tales of corpses and killers, invading a genre that sometimes falls victim to taking itself too seriously.
8/10
Death Comes To All is available now through Nuclear Blast, and the band will be on tour throughout the US this year.