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Band: The Gathering
Album title: Beautiful Distortion
Release date: 29 April 2022
Label: Psychonaut Records
Genre: Alternative Rock, Trip Rock
Tracklist:
01. In Colour
02. When We Fall
03. Grounded
04. We Rise
05. Black Is Magnified
06. Weightless
07. Pulse Of Life
08. On Delay
A few months short to a decade since releasing their last full-length release, the excellent sonic voyage entitled Disclosure, the dutch alternative rock ensemble The Gathering has finally come to light with another stellar release. Taking a creative break and releasing a few EPs in the meantime seemed a good idea for the band, as their latest offering, Beautiful Disclosure, is an astonishing comeback to an ethereal experience only The Gathering can deliver. After releasing a few tracks prior to the album release, I had a strong feeling we are going back in time to the era of the great opus How To Measure A Planet?, so it was no surprise to me when I found out the producer of the afore-mentioned release, Attie Bauw, who also worked with the band on their 2002's release Home, was behind the producing and engineering of the new album. Alongside the band's tendency to provoke a deep palette of emotions through distorted and mesmerizing soundscapes, we are witnessing another stellar The Gathering release.
Hardly any band has gone through so many drastic changes in its sound yet created a solid signature style such as The Gathering. Starting as a death/doom metal band, they decided to drop the monolithic doom guitar sound after two releases, and had us falling head over heels in love with their atmospheric, mesmerizing goth-like approach to music when Anneke Van Giersbergen joined the band. Moving over, the band parted ways with the hoarse metal sound and peered more and more into alternative rock waters, with a strong trip-rock vibe to it. And when Van Giersbergen decided to follow her own path in 2009, the band found the best possible voice to suit their music, the wondrous Silje Wergeland. Vocals have been a strong and important feature of The Gathering's music ever since the legendary Mandylion was released, as they are an integral part of bringing the dissonance and poetic beauty to their maximum.
Beautiful Distortion could not be a better title for the album, as it is exactly that. The album opens up with a slow-burning ''In Color'', a dark and heavy-hearted track which also incorporates enlightening mood to it and balances both worlds into a wonderful atmospheric collision. The following ''When We Fall'' starts off with a bedazzling, pulsating sound and evolves furthermore into an intense yet ethereal ballad. The celestial, shoegaze inclined sound then flows at the beginning of ''Grounded'' and then swiftly picks up its tempo, but at the last third takes a sudden twist again and flows in the vein of a very traditional gothic sense. The darksome and eerie feel, which slightly reminds of the band's Souvenirs era, is presented in a gloomy ballad ''Weightless'', while ''We Rise'' is a song which could easily make it to the band's earliest albums with its hollow, distorted guitars and low-profile rhythm section, alongside its wonderful, electronic manipulation. The haunting and soaring ''Pulse Of Life'' is another memory-provoking track - filled with vehement dynamics and a sudden twist in pace - when it slows down towards the end, the piano tune and Silje's soul-piercing vocals simply tear your soul apart with how touching it sounds. ''Black Is Magnified'' easily became a fan-favourite, which is no surprise, as the track is quite light-weight, but still arouses so many emotions, while the final chapter under the title ''On Delay'' carries the whole Home vibe and hits with the nostalgic feeling once more.
Beautiful Distortion is the classical spleen and ideal of atmospheric and subdued modern rock. While this album does not deliver anything innovative and overly dramatic, The Gathering captured their essence one more time and released an album with strong songwriting, creating a wide plethora of emotions and a dense, yet tender atmosphere, which is there from the first to the last second. And it gets more and more thought-provoking with every listen. With their colourful music background and history, they left nothing to coincidence, as they know how to embrace the oscillation of sounds to deliver such qualitative consistency.
The review was written by Ines
Rating: 9/10
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