Boasting members from high-calibre extreme bands like Amenra, YOB, Wiegedood and Oathbreaker, Living Gate are an exciting prospect for fans of heavy music. Just don’t expect them to sound like their other bands, because Living Gate are all about paying homage to a classic genre they all share a love for: old school death metal.

“To me, death metal is the most extreme version of heavy music,” says Levy Seynaeve (ex-Amenra, Wiegedood), Living Gate’s vocalist and guitarist. “Black metal has a certain atmosphere for sure, but there’s nothing as heavy and hard-hitting as a good death metal record. Especially the old school beginnings of death metal. It’s also challenging to play: you listen to those early DM records, and you can hear that the musicians are on the edge, being pushed to their limits.”

Levy and Living Gate guitarist Lennart Bossu (Oathbreaker, Amenra) had long discussed the idea of doing a death metal project, and when they finally got some time to focus on making it a reality, they set about finding members. They enlisted fellow bandmate and death metal fan Wim Coppers (Oathbreaker, Wiegedood) on drums, but initially struggled to find a suitable bassist.

“Around that time, we did a US tour with YOB, and we got to know those guys and Aaron [Rieseberg (YOB)] a little better,” Levy says. “We noticed that a lot of the conversations with Aaron were about death metal, and he was so technically advanced as a player that I had this crazy idea to ask him to be in the band, even though he’s in a different continent! He was really excited to do it.”

With the band members in place, Living Gate set about recording their debut EP, Deathlust, which was released in 2020. But unfortunately, Covid got in the way. “We had to cancel all our tours,” Levy says. “We feel like the EP kind of drowned in the whole Covid situation. So it’s really nice to have a second chance to reintroduce ourselves to the world and on an amazing label like Relapse.”

This second chance comes in the form of their new, debut album, Suffer As One. Right from the opening blast of first song To Cut Off The Head Of The Snake, the 11-track record ricochets from pummels of technical prowess and furious speed to crushingly heavy chug, with an eerie instrumental, Massive Depletion in Eb Minor, smack in the middle of the intensity. And while the record certainly has echoes of their old school heroes like Death, Suffocation, Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse, it’s far from a carbon copy.

“We still try to have a face of our own, and we like modern death metal bands too, like Blood Incantation, or Tomb Mold,” says Levy. “We like a more organic sound, that doesn’t sound like it was made on a computer.”

This was one of the most important elements for Living Gate while making Suffer As One: recording organically. “We recorded all the songs without a metronome,” Levy says. “There are no drum triggers, no drum grid, no click tragic. We’re very proud of that. We didn’t want it to sound perfect; we wanted it to sound human.” Suffer As One was recorded at Hearse Studio in Belgium with Lander Cluyse, who previously worked with Aborted and Leng ‘Tche, and is, as Levy says, a fellow “death metal nerd”. Aaron also came over from the US, so that the band could all record together. “For the EP, we recorded our parts and sent them to Aaron,” Levy says. “But for this we were all in the studio to record it. It was a lot better for the creative process, feeling like we’re four pieces of a full band.”

As Living Gate’s lyricist, Levy explores a variety of themes from everyday life, from the dangers of AI, to paying tribute to a friend who passed away. The album’s title, Suffer As One, encapsulates the idea that humans are one species in collective pain, and the cover art, created by Dutch artist Marald van Haasteren, perfectly visualises the title: with a giant beast made up of a fusion of writhing creatures and skeletons against a violet pink backdrop. “I love the pink,” Levy says. “It’s very atypical for death metal to have pink in a record; it’s good to do things that people wouldn’t expect.”

As Levy is quick to add, despite what the album title might suggest at first glance, it’s not a nihilistic viewpoint. “The world is one big cluster of suffering but we have to go through it together, and I feel like we’re all just fighting each other,” he says. “The title track actually has a very positive message – how you can rise above the suffering; how there is more power inside us than we think.

“I used to be a lot more nihilistic about things and I realised that nagging and whining doesn’t help me or anybody else,” Levy says. “I also want to express my gratitude for life: it still feels insane that we get to do this, to go around the world and play music that some people might find horrible!”

Living Gate will be starting their first headline tour in October, and will also play festivals including Amplifest in Portugal. And for anyone concerned that distance and other projects might mean that these are one-off shows, Levy is reassuring: “It can be hard to find periods of time when everybody’s free,” he admits, “but this won’t be the last Living Gate tour, that’s for sure.”