At The Gates – The Ghost Of A Future Dead Album Packaging Design

Conversations, Fear and the Unfathomable
– Visualising The Ghost Of A Future Dead

My conversations with Tomas Lindberg about the album and its visual concept began in October 2023. He laid out early on that he wasn’t interested in having a “classic death metal album cover”, and having known him for some time I already knew that he was deeply interested in all kinds of music far outside the metal realm. We bonded deeply over our shared taste in music, and from the very beginning I expected the visual direction to move beyond the familiar aesthetics and clichés often associated with metal artwork.

Tomas mentioned a vague idea of ”space”. He kept returning to the image of an astronaut, though he couldn’t fully articulate exactly what it was. “Maybe seeing what the astronaut was seeing in space, looking through the visor. Or something like that.”

The idea of space stayed with me. During one of the meetings we had at my home, I told him about when I used to read bedtime stories to my son when he was younger, and how he always wanted me to read from a children’s fact book about space. My son would fall asleep peacefully, completely at ease, while I lay awake growing increasingly anxious. I kept thinking about infinite space and how we are all insignificant specks of dust in an ever-expanding void – a vast nothingness engulfing everything around it, an energy too vast for man to comprehend. My thoughts began spiraling, and I found myself drawn back to what it was like having fever dreams as a child.

The story made us both burst out laughing. Then his expression changed. He suddenly looked distant, lost in thought.

”— Oh, man.”

And I understood there was something in this story worth pursuing.

Tomas and I never really analyzed every song or lyric in detail. Our conversations focused more on the overall themes and emotional landscape of the album. Tomas was very aware of – and quite open about – how dramatic and “over the top” his writing could be. He painted with a broad, exaggerated and often violent brush, yet there was always something deeply poetic beneath it all. In one way or another, the lyrics almost always circled around death, horror and – in a sense – what it means to be human.

Shortly after the initial sketches had been presented, Tomas shared the news of his cancer diagnosis. Naturally, the project slowed down considerably while he underwent treatment and recovery. It also became important for me to check in with him – to make sure the concepts of death and fear still felt right to continue exploring. He said his condition didn’t change anything about the visual direction. If anything, it made it even stronger.

During much of 2024, the work remained largely dormant apart from occasional conversations, new ideas, and moments of inspiration that would slowly shape the direction further.

The design process was reignited early in 2025. After such a long hiatus in the project, I revisited the initial drafts and saw room for improvement. Although these initial sketches ultimately served as a proof of concept and established the visual direction moving forward, I still felt that something was missing from the front cover composition. The atmosphere and conceptual foundation were there, but I lacked a stronger sense of movement and emotional tension within the imagery.

I found myself returning to the visual language of albums such as Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division and Nowhere by Ride – artworks that, in very different ways, carried a sense of motion, abstraction and immersive atmosphere that resonated with what I was searching for. I allowed myself to be inspired by that emotional and compositional energy, and from there the artwork gradually evolved into something more dynamic while still preserving the original mood and visual language that Tomas and I had connected with early on.

Tomas followed the design process with great interest throughout the project. He cared intensely about how the music and his lyrics translated visually, and our conversations around the concept meant a great deal to me. I continued developing and refining the overall artwork direction, and by April 2025 the front and back cover concepts had been approved – something he was genuinely excited about.

After Tomas sadly passed away in September 2025, we never had the chance to fully complete the final pieces of the artwork together. I deeply missed his input, his enthusiasm and the conversations we shared throughout the process. Carrying our shared vision forward after Tomas had left us was emotionally very difficult, and the responsibility of carrying that vision forward gave the remaining work on the project a very different emotional weight. In many ways, the final stages of the process became a tribute to Tomas and everything he brought to the project creatively and personally.

I remain deeply grateful for what we created together. I hope this work will continue to live on as a small part of Tomas’s creative legacy.

Tomas Lindberg 1972–2025.
I miss you, my friend.