{"id":734770,"date":"2026-08-11T17:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734770\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T17:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:48:09","slug":"orbit-culture-pay-tribute-to-late-at-the-gates-singer-tomas-lindberg-he-felt-like-a-metal-uncle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734770\/","title":{"rendered":"Orbit Culture pay tribute to late At The Gates singer Tomas Lindberg: \u201cHe felt like a metal uncle\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rising Swedish death metal<\/a> stars Orbit Culture<\/a> have paid tribute to late At The Gates<\/a> frontman Tomas Lindberg, four years after taking part in Lindberg\u2019s final tour before his death.<\/p>\n

Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, singer\/guitarist Niklas Karlsson, whose band supported At The Gates and fellow Gothenburg melodic death metal pioneers In Flames<\/a> across Europe, remembers Lindberg as a \u201cmetal uncle\u201d who was approachable and down-to-earth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Although At The Gates played a handful of festival shows in 2023, it was their last full-length tour with their singer before he was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer of the mouth and pallet, in December 2023. He died in September 2025 aged 52, following complications in his recovery.<\/p>\n

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\u201c[Lindberg] was so fucking kind to new, young bands,\u201d Karlsson says. \u201cThe most down-to-earth guy you\u2019ll ever meet. In one of the green rooms, he was watching skiing and drinking beer, and he was like, \u2018You want to go out and play some darts?\u2019 So we played darts with him and shit like that. He felt like a metal uncle, and it\u2019s so sad that he got taken away at such a young age. We miss him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The singer\/guitarist also remembers how In Flames, who headlined the tour, became one of Orbit Culture\u2019s biggest champions. As well as opening for In Flames in Europe, Orbit Culture have performed at the band\u2019s festival G\u00f6teborg Brinner and played with them across North America in summer 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked with Anders [Frid\u00e9n, In Flames singer] a year or two ago and he said, \u2018What separates you guys from other bands is you took the risk. You\u2019re where you are today because you took stupid risks and they paid off,\u2019\u201d Karlsson explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur stupidest risk was our first US tour with In Flames in 2022. We were worth maybe $4,000 and we rented a bus for 60 grand. The funny thing is that we sold so much merch, we actually came home with profit! It was a stupid risk and I wouldn\u2019t advise it, but, when you have a dream, you just try to pursue it, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lindberg co-founded At The Gates after the split of his previous band, Grotesque, in 1990. Though they initially specialised in a form of progressive death metal, they became one of the leading forces of the melodic death metal scene in the mid-90s, alongside In Flames and fellow Gothenburg band Dark Tranquillity. Their third album, 1995\u2019s Slaughter Of The Soul<\/a>, is seen as a masterpiece of the genre.<\/p>\n

At The Gates split in 1996 but reformed in 2008 and made another four albums. The latest, The Ghost Of A Future Dead<\/a>, was released after Lindberg\u2019s death and featured vocal takes that he demoed shortly before his cancer surgery in early 2024. The music, artwork and tracklisting were approved by the singer.<\/p>\n

News of Lindberg\u2019s death was met with a wave of tributes from fans and peers. Opeth\u2019s Mikael \u00c5kerfeldt said that \u201cas a frontman \u2026 he was awesome, plain and simple. Wild!\u201d and \u201cintellectually, he seemed to be a step above and beyond your generic metal musician\u201d. Trivium<\/a>\u2019s Matt Heafy called him \u201cone of the most important singers\/screamers of any metal band\u201d.<\/p>\n

At The Gates have not confirmed whether or not they will continue without Lindberg. Their last show was at Aalborg Metal Festival in Denmark in November 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rising Swedish death metal stars Orbit Culture have paid tribute to late At The Gates frontman Tomas Lindberg,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-734770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}