There is still plenty of darkness inside ATER.
The crushing low end, extreme vocals and heaviness that drove 2024’s Somber haven’t suddenly disappeared. If anything, they’re now sitting inside something much bigger.
On album number three, Everlasting, Chilean dark metal outfit ATER are pulling gothic rock, doom, melody, clean vocals, romanticism and some incredibly raw vulnerability into a sound that Fernando Bühring no longer seems interested in keeping inside clearly defined walls.
When I caught up with Fernando for Crannk, what became clear pretty quickly was that Everlasting isn’t ATER trying to become a completely different band.
It’s Fernando finally allowing everything that has always existed around his musical world to belong inside ATER.
Looking back at Somber, he can now recognise that he had given himself a fairly specific mission. Take the progressive, Meshuggah and Vildhjarta-influenced foundations of ATER and collide them with the more extreme sounds he had become obsessed with.
It worked.
But once he’d built that foundation, there wasn’t much point making the same record again.
For Everlasting, Fernando wanted freedom.
“It was all about breaking all the walls and starting anew,” he tells me, “and being more honest about the music I wanted to create.”
That honesty would take ATER somewhere even Fernando hadn’t expected.
When Music Became Something You Could Actually Do
I always like taking these conversations right back to the earliest core musical memory, that first moment where music stops being something playing around you and suddenly becomes part of who you are.
For Fernando, that moment involved Primus and a toy drum kit.
Growing up during the early ’90s, music was already a big part of his family environment. One day a drummer friend of his mother’s came over to the house, sat down behind a small toy kit that had largely been collecting dust and started ripping through “John the Fisherman.”
Not just mucking around either.
He was recreating what Fernando was hearing coming through the speakers.
For a young Fernando, something clicked.
“I realised that moment that what you hear coming out of the speakers is something that you can actually do,” he remembers.
“And I knew then that was what I needed to do.”
Years later that kid would create ATER.
Becoming the band’s vocalist, however, wasn’t originally part of the plan.
“Just Go For It, Man”
ATER’s debut album, Eternal Gray Spiral, arrived in 2018 as an instrumental record.
It wasn’t supposed to.
Fernando had spent years looking for somebody who could provide the vocals he was hearing in his head, but the right person never appeared. Instead of sitting around forever waiting for shit to happen, he released the record as it was.
I’ve always loved that part of the ATER story.
Sometimes you’ve just got to make the fucking thing.
At that stage ATER was still largely Fernando’s own project, but things began changing after he rebuilt the band in California with brothers Josh and Stefan.
Fernando gives them a lot of credit for pushing him towards becoming the singer himself.
When the time came to begin working on what eventually became Somber, he already had some lyrics, but stepping behind the microphone was still new territory.
Josh set up a recording situation at the house where they rehearsed and essentially told him:
“Just go for it, man.”
So Fernando did.
Some of those early vocal takes survived all the way onto Somber.
Now jump forward through the extensive touring that followed the album, and the person singing on Everlasting is a very different Fernando.
“I became a much more confident vocalist and frontman,” he explains, “and that was crucial for the making of this new album.”
You can hear it.
Not just in the massive gutturals and extreme vocals, but in the moments where Fernando strips all of that protection away.
The Song That Unlocked Everlasting
Fernando wrote the music for Everlasting before properly diving into the lyrics and vocal arrangements.
And the record came together with an unusual amount of focus.
There wasn’t some giant pile of rejected songs being shuffled around.
He wrote one.
Moved to the next.
Then the next.
The album sequence largely follows the order those songs were created in.
But it wasn’t until Fernando reached track four that he suddenly understood what the whole thing was becoming.
That song was “Neverlasting.”
“Once I reached that fourth track, then I realised what the whole album should be about,” he tells me.
That answer immediately grabbed me because “Neverlasting” already feels like the point where the promise inside the album title begins falling apart.
Everlasting sounds permanent.
Romantic.
Maybe even hopeful.
Then you get Neverlasting.
Fernando had found the emotional doorway into the record and began recognising other ideas he needed to explore throughout the songs surrounding it.
In a lot of ways, “Neverlasting” became the track that unlocked Everlasting.
“My Personal Life Has Been Pretty Fucking Turbulent”
The darkness on Somber could feel violent, oppressive and enormous.
The darkness on Everlasting comes from somewhere much more human.
Love.
Desire.
Worship.
Obsession.
Control.
Addiction.
Rejection.
Grief.
Fernando doesn’t pretend those themes came from nowhere.
“My personal life has been pretty fucking turbulent in terms of my love life,” he tells me.
He describes himself as an incredibly passionate person, somebody who doesn’t really do love halfway.
“Whoever I pour my love into, I really am devoted to in a very deep way.”
Then he throws out one of those little details that you couldn’t fucking script any better if you tried.
His middle name is Amador.
It means “lover”, or “the one who loves”.
Considering the record we were sitting there discussing, I couldn’t help but love that.
Fernando talks about feeling as though he’s already lived many different lives through relationships and personal experiences, and admits that loving that intensely has also cost him plenty.
What’s even more interesting is that only a relatively short time ago he couldn’t imagine putting any of that into ATER.
“A few years ago, or maybe even months ago, I would have said, ‘I will never write a romantic song or anything about love.’”
Then Everlasting started coming together.
“I was like, ‘Fuck. Okay. It’s time to be real about it.’”
And that right there might be the key to understanding this whole record.
ATER haven’t suddenly adopted gothic romance because it looks cool beside some dark artwork.
Fernando finally stopped hiding that part of himself from his own music.
An Ode To Venus
That honesty begins with album opener “Venus.”
There’s something almost religious about the desire running through the track.
It isn’t simply attraction.
There’s worship.
Sacrifice.
Sensuality.
Something ritualistic.
Fernando explains that the lyrics emerged while he was working through vocal demos in his studio, often spending entire nights with his friend Matias developing vocal ideas and writing words directly in response to what the music was giving him.
“Venus” wasn’t written about one specific woman.
It’s broader than that.
Fernando describes it as an ode to femininity itself.
“My feeling of devotion for women and for the female figure in general.”
That song helped establish what the rest of Everlasting could become.
ATER could still crush you sonically while allowing beauty, desire and romanticism to exist inside the same space.
“Sleep” And Taking Away The Armour
“Sleep” might be the song that fascinated me most going into the interview.
It arrives deep into the emotional collapse running through Everlasting, at a point where love has already turned into loss and grief.
Fernando describes the song as capturing a very particular stage of depression after losing somebody.
You don’t want to fall asleep because you know you’re going to dream about them.
At the same time, you don’t want to wake up because waking means facing another day without them.
And while you’re awake, getting yourself out of bed can feel almost impossible.
That contradiction lives at the heart of “Sleep.”
But what really struck me was Fernando’s vocal performance.
During our conversation I put something to him that I’d been thinking about while listening to the song.
Extreme vocals can become a kind of armour.
You can push pain through this enormous scream or guttural voice and put something between yourself and the listener.
Clean singing doesn’t necessarily give you that same place to hide.
Fernando agreed straight away.
“Absolutely, Jai. You’re very much correct. One hundred percent.”
And getting those clean vocals where they needed to be wasn’t something he treated casually.
Fernando travelled to Berlin specifically to work on them with producer Thomas Geigger.
They spent roughly a week focused on developing the performances.
Fernando credits him as an essential part of finding both the sound and emotional delivery that ultimately ended up on the finished record.
Think about that journey for a second.
Fernando once released ATER’s debut instrumentally because he couldn’t find the singer he needed.
Then he became the singer himself.
Touring made him a stronger extreme-metal vocalist and frontman.
Now he’s travelling to another country specifically to develop the most exposed singing of his career.
The evolution of ATER has become inseparable from Fernando finding his own voice.
Type O Negative And Going Back To The Beginning
One of Fernando’s deepest influences has always been Type O Negative.
His older brother introduced him to the band when Fernando was around 12 or 13, and October Rust became one of those foundational albums that never really leaves you.
So when Fernando realised the record was approaching its 30th anniversary, he started playing around with some Type O Negative songs at home.
Not because there was a release campaign planned.
Not because ATER suddenly needed a cover single.
He simply wanted to celebrate a record that meant something to him.
“My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” was the one that clicked.
The initial version came together within a few hours before Fernando presented it to the rest of ATER.
And I also appreciated his honesty here.
The idea of putting out a cover wasn’t unanimously loved straight away.
They talked about it.
Eventually everyone got behind it.
Vincent recorded his drums, Fernando completed the production work and the whole thing came together ridiculously quickly compared with the way ATER normally operate.
More importantly, the Type O Negative connection tells us something about Everlasting.
Fernando wanted to reconnect with some of the influences that were there long before anyone started defining exactly what ATER was supposed to sound like.
Somber Built The Foundation
Fernando still has a deep attachment to Somber.
But looking back now, he can see that he approached it with a pretty defined creative target.
On one side sat the progressive and rhythmic world of Meshuggah, Vildhjarta and the earlier ATER material.
On the other were increasingly extreme influences including Hate, Belphegor, Celtic Frost and the black and death metal that had consumed him.
Somber was about forcing those two worlds together.
Fernando achieved what he wanted.
Which meant there was no reason to simply repeat it.
That record gave him a base.
Everlasting gave him somewhere to expand from it.
Doom.
Goth.
Black metal.
Death metal.
Clean singing.
Ballads.
Romanticism.
Extreme heaviness.
Why shouldn’t all of it belong to ATER?
“For me it was about dragging stuff from all things dark,” Fernando says.
“That’s doom, that’s goth. Not just black metal and death metal.”
And I think that distinction matters.
Everlasting isn’t ATER becoming less heavy.
It’s ATER deciding that heaviness doesn’t have to be the only language they speak.
No More Rules
That’s what makes Everlasting such an interesting third album.
The foundations are still there.
ATER haven’t abandoned the oppressive weight or extremity that made Somber hit as hard as it did.
They’ve simply widened the fucking canvas.
How vulnerable can ATER become without losing that heaviness?
Can gothic sensuality sit beside dissonance and gutturals?
Can a romantic ballad exist on the same album as something brutally extreme?
Can clean vocals feel every bit as dark as screaming?
Fernando doesn’t seem particularly interested in putting walls around those questions anymore.
And that’s probably the most exciting place a band can be.
Everlasting arrives January 29, 2027 through Torque Records.
After everything Fernando revealed during our conversation, maybe the biggest evolution isn’t the goth, the doom or even the clean vocals.
Maybe it’s simply that Fernando Bühring has stopped asking what ATER is supposed to sound like.
The walls are down.
Now we get to find out where ATER goes without them.
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW
Jai That Aussie Metal Guy sits down with ATER’s Fernando Bühring to dig deeper into Everlasting, his journey into becoming the band’s vocalist, the darkness behind the album’s love story, “Sleep,” Type O Negative and breaking down the creative walls around ATER.
EVERLASTING TRACKLIST
- Venus
- When At Night
- Heart Of Glass
- Neverlasting
- Make Me Bleed
- Ketamine
- Sleep
- With You Came The Winter
ATER IS
Fernando Bühring
Vincent Zbinden
Christian Vallejos
Javier Ciudad
ATER’s third album, Everlasting, arrives January 29, 2027 through Torque Records.
Follow ATER through their official channels and crank the new singles loud enough that the neighbours don’t have a choice.
Connect With ATER:
Official Website: https://ater.cl/
Bandcamp: https://aterdark.bandcamp.com/track/venus
E-Shop: https://torquerecords.cl/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atermetal
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ater_dark/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLi-j7y9lIxdsYKFgstrEnQ
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1HpPzWF2E6G8KfD5pOM6La?si=VnkqfBBES0CNjcUJAolUKg
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/ater/1358582188
