Anneke Is Awesome
Lumazu | California | 06/24/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Anneke and Tarja from Nightwish are my two favorite female lead singers when it comes to this kind of music. While with Nightwish, we have over-the-top sythesizers and powerful operatic voices, The Gathering are more laid-back, delivering a more subtle power through lead-vocalist Anneke.
Anneke is by far superior to the Evanescense singer. It's difficult for me to compare the two, as I see them as from two completely separate genres. The Gathering sounds more gothic and less like Britney Spears trying to be gothic. Evanescense is okay...they're better than Tapping the Vein, but that's not saying a whole lot. This band is miles above the two: they started as a gothic band and slowly became more acceptable to a larger audience. But the fact is that they appeal to BOTH the goth AND the pop crowds, and if that is not signs of a talented band, I don't know what is.
Only reason I rate it four stars is because I don't really like the more pop-sounding melodies they use, but that's more an issue of personal taste than a defect of the band.
Highlights for me include: "Nighttime Birds", "Confusion", and "Kevin's Telescope"."
Anekke is God
djhexane | Ohio, USofA | 11/13/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"If god were a female with a beautiful voice.I love her vocals, they are absolutely beautiful and divine. I rank her right up there with Tarja of Nightwish as my favorite female vocalist.They mix rock, prog, and etherial atmosphere with her beautiful (soprano is it called?) singing. The mix is absolutley perfect. The yearning is obvious is Kevin's Telescope as well as wishing to be free as a bird is Nighttime Birds. The Earth is my Witness talks about the rejuvination of life and Shrink tells about inadequacies in like. Do yourself a favour and buy this album (along with the rest of their albums). You won't look back."
Great follow-up to Mandylion
wordnerd64 | Kansas City, MO USA | 10/06/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"On their second release featuring vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen, the Dutch band The Gathering moves even further away from their death metal roots, though they continue to be inexplicably lumped into that genre. It's unfortunate, because most of the bad reviews you'll read of The Gathering are a result of this confusion. Either way, the band shows a growth in their sound, a continuation of the atmospheric, moody beauty first presented on their previous release "Mandylion." Annke's vocals, while certainly haunting and beautiful, may not be technically perfect, as pointed out by a few narrow-minded reviewers, but there has rarely been a case where a singer's voice was so perfectly suited to the music she's singing. It really is magical at times (right around the 5 minute mark in "On Most Surfaces," for example). "Nighttime Birds" is a solid progression to the sound the band cultivated on "Mandylion," being a little less metal, a little more atmospheric, carrying themselves futher from "death" and closer to "prog.""
Track Listings (9) - Disc #1
