Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg (1972 – 2025)

This Tuesday, 16th of September, the devastating news reached us of the passing of Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg, vocalist, lyricist, teacher, and founding member of At the Gates. At just 52 years old, his voice was silenced after a long and courageous struggle with illness.

The band announced his death with the following words:

“Today we lost not only our brother and bandmate, but one of the most passionate and uncompromising souls we’ve ever known. Tomas fought with strength and dignity until the very end. Our grief is immeasurable. On behalf of At the Gates.”

From their earliest work, the Gardens of Grief EP (1991), grandiose and raw in equal measure, through the monumental The Red in the Sky is Ours (1992), and the dense, otherworldly With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness (1993), Lindberg helped to craft a vision of extreme metal that stood apart. With these records, At the Gates did not merely take part in what would become the melodic death metal movement, but prefaced it with a body of work that remains among the greatest death metal ever committed to tape, marrying labyrinthine riffs, majestic harmonies, and unflinching intensity into something monumental.

Central to this vision was Tomas’s voice, a pained howl, at once expressive and deeply emotive, yet still retaining a raw grit that gave it the character of a mad prophet preaching terrible truths. His vocals were the final piece that completed the band’s complex and melodic style, fusing their turbulence and intricacy into something unmistakable and whole.

Beyond At the Gates, Tomas Lindberg’s restless creativity found expression in numerous other projects. With the fantastic Disfear, he carried the spirit of D-beat and crust punk into ferocious modernity. With Skitsystem, he embraced unflinching hardcore aggression. With Grotesque, he helped lay early foundations for what would become the Gothenburg sound. And with his brief but memorable involvement in Liers in Wait, he left his mark on one of the most haunting and intense cult projects of the Swedish scene. Each of these bands bore his unmistakable conviction and voice, further underlining the breadth of his artistic vision.

With his passing, a chapter closes in the story of extreme metal. Tomas Lindberg leaves behind a timeless legacy that pushed metal to its highest limits, and one that, even decades on, has yet to be surpassed.