The Gathering — Home

The previous album Souvenirs for me heralded the coming off age of The Gathering. The last bits of their ill-fitted rockattempts were shed in favour of a mature, dark and atmospheric popsound.

When I heard that they were planning to return to a more rockier approach for the yet to be recorded album it didn’t seem a good idea to me. Now that it’s finally finished I’m glad to find out that that ambition didn’t make it through the recording process. Only a more direct, more organic, approach seems to have survived. Also a little more distorted guitar and maybe a tad more uptempo songs like In Between . To balance it out we do get a fair share of soft and subtle tunes, like the spinechilling semi pianoballad Forgotten (and the even more spinechilling version that comes in the reprise at the end of the record) and Box. The dreamy A Noise Severe is preceded by an almost scary soundscape in the form of Fatigue. The most peculiar arrangement is found in Solace with first having the meter counted out in Dutch (I think it’s keyboardplayer Frank), and also the use of bits of talking in a whole bunch of languages. I hear Spanish, French, Swedish and some others, which at first sounds a bit strange but turns out to fit wel. The titlesong has very fragile vocals, which is very nice in times where it’s hard to come by vocals that are not digitally manipulated into almost a sinewave. It's one of the highlights of the album.

It’s a bit of a cheap shot, but yes: this album confirms that The Gathering have indeed found their Home on this album. I can also add that once again, after the current Album Of The Month by Track Addicts I can tell you about another great album made in my homecountry.