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Formats and Editions
1. These Good People
2. Even the Spirits Are Afraid
3. Broken Glass
4. You Learn About It
5. Souvenirs
6. We Just Stopped Breathing
7. Monsters
8. Golden Grounds
9. Jelena
10. Life All Mine, A
More Info:
Holland's premier orck band the Gathering are now release their latest effort, SOUVENIRS. Again the Gathering, rock and groove taking an exciting journey through highly impressive emotional music, in which Anneke van Giersbergen reflects on her mental "souvenirs" of real life experience. The Gather invented the term "triprock" to escape being pigeonholed by the music community, with SOUVENIRS again they prove to be pioneers in bending modern sound into beautiful, experimental music. Music.Reviews:
Poor Century Media. Resolutely scouringEurope for that one female-fronted melodic metal band (be it Lacuna Coil, PoisonBlack or Lullacry) who'll make the big commercial breakthrough—you've got to admiretheir perseverance, if not their critical ear. Based on the recent runaway successof Evanescence, it appears CM discovered part of the proper formula—they justneeded to substitute those growling backing vocals with lame ass, tortured whiteboy raps. Adding further insult, Dutch rockers the Gathering—the first of thosefemale-fronted bands the label signed some eight years ago—split with CM lastyear and have now gone and delivered some of their strongest songs for a new label.Listening to Souvenirs—the group's seventh studio LP—that shift seems appropriate.Given the band's metallic edges have been all but washed away in a Radiohead-obsesseddeluge, the Gathering no longer fit CM's viable blueprint. Instead, songs suchas "Broken Glass" and "These Good People" boast the kind of gorgeous guitar linessadly absent from Radiohead's post-OK Computer programming.
Still, it's vocalistAnneke van Giersbergen who remains the band's focal point, which, consideringshe's been known to sing the bejezus out of songs, is a risky design. Mercifully,she contains her full-bodied voice on the more subdued and textural numbers like"Even the Spirits Are Afraid" and "We Just Stopped Breathing," allowing the electronicablips and beeps to propel the numbers. This, however, also exposes the Gathering'sobvious limitations as a pop band. On both "Golden Grounds" and the meandering10-minute "Jelena" their hooks are like MTV "personalities"—pretty but not alltogether memorable. That's nowhere more evident than in "A Life All Mine," theclosing trip-hop duet with Arcturus/Ulver vocalist Trickster G. (nee Garm). Well,at least the guy doesn't bust any rhymes about his inner pain.
