A notable feature of The Gathering is their use heavy guitar yet achieving a unique atmospheric style. As the undulating melody propogates in the background, the guitar provides a counter-ripple to perform contrasting leads, and the rhythm blends nicely. Not only is the guitar's job to be heavy, it has its soft moments of simple melody rather than driving riffs.
Keyboards and bass tend to round out the background sound, whereas the drums are just sort of there throughout. The resulting sound is extremely atmospheric; it reaches out around you and draws you in. Unfortunately the strong technical nature tends to overshadow the more emotional aspects. Instead of interweaving itself with your mind, the music very much sits by the speakers and attempts to play with your emotions from a distance. The aforementioned drums that are just there do give the music this continuous slow pounding that delivers a trance-inducing sound.
In the end one can only say that this is a beautiful album. While many were probably hoping for the same emotional power as on Mandylion, The Gathering have gone for more of a technical sound and in the process lost a lot of the emotional power that really drew one back to putting their CD on the player over and over again. I think they just tried too hard this time around.
Back to Index