Gates To Hell Death Comes to All

Gates to Hell don't waste time. The combined runtime of their first three EPs is 18 minutes and change, their admirable self-titled debut LP from 2022 was only 17 minutes, and their superb follow-up, Death Comes to All, is only four minutes longer.

But the Louisville-based quintet—vocalist Ryan Storey, guitarists Seth Lewis and Eli Hanson, bassist Dustin Cantrell, and drummer Trey Garris—make the most of those 21 minutes. Musically, Death Comes to All is the band's most varied and interesting release to date. Part of that is thanks to Garris, who debuted last year on the excellent standalone single “Resurrected.” His predecessor, Trae Roberts, is a talented musician, but his slightly-stiff playing boxed the band into a mostly-straightforward brand of bullet-train deathcore. Garris, however, is looser and more skilled than his predecessor, and his playing often feels like ex-Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler—most notably on “A Summoning” and “Next to Bleed.” This allows the band a newfound agility in both songwriting and execution with which they add some groove and some grind to their songwriting and musicianship.

The result is a punishing album that rewards close listening. Gates to Hell's overall sound and aesthetic isn't wheel-reinvention, granted, but what makes Death Comes to All special is the neat arrangement choices that only reveal themselves after multiple spins, like the dazzling pivot from bouncy deathcore to frantically-sprinting grindcore on “Weeping in Pain,” or the impressive speedrun through everything they now do—grind, death, groove, '90s metal-core—on album closer “Fused with the Soil.” And they’re also able to employ this upgraded dexterity to smartly accent the lyrics—for example, the back half of “21 Sacraments” where the song explodes into hysteric grind to mirror lyrics about insanity ("The walls are bleeding / The walls are screaming / Hopeless and lost / Is this a dream, or have I lost it all?"), or on "Crazed Killer" when the guitar squeals during the lines “The fear grows / As he nears” as a illustration of the victim’s fear and then blast beats jump in for the lines “He has but one purpose / To wear your skin” to simulate the psycho killer’s excitement.

Speaking of psychos, Storey—who sounds like roughly the middle ground between Tim Lambesis and Trevor Strnad—as a writer is clearly influenced by the murder-fantasy vignettes of Sanguisugabogg's Devin Swank ("Strapped to my table / You'll be the next to bleed / And I'll take every last drop / From you") and the demented poetry of Pig Destroyer's J.R. Hayes ("Eyes in the trees / Skin crawls, I fall to my knees / Branch breaks, I scream / Leaves race by, my body dies / Fly over my body"). And when it comes to killing, sometimes it's ritualistic ("Cloaked figures / Surround me / A summoning / Slicing my wrists / Draining my life / Blood fills their chalice"), and sometimes it's simply an inconvenient inevitability ("Moving from room to room / Praying on the hopeless / One by one / Death comes to all in his way"). Whatever the case, there's plenty of violence and murder to satiate fans of the disturbing and the macabre.

Bottom Line: So, yeah, Death Comes to All might be the most aptly-titled album this year. To wit: 70 seconds into this electrifying record, you'll find a succinct tagline for the band: “A monster / Hell's construction.” Indeed, Gates to Hell are fascinated by profoundly dark shit, and the horror movies they’ve pulled clips from across their (short) career—The Hitcher, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Drag Me to Hell, Event Horizon—are kind of a dead giveaway. Every band should strive to make evil this enticing.