Although The Gathering started out as a death/doom metal outfit, they have evolved into a more atmospheric
rock band throughout the past decade, and have progressed in this
direction since vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen joined in the mid 90's.

The Gathering's cover of Dead Can Dance's "In Power We Entrust The Love
Advocated" (originally recorded as a B-side for the single "Kevin's
Telescope" ) also appears on the Dead Can Dance Tribute album "The Lotus
Eaters".

The Gathering's first film participation was the theme for the "The
Cyclist", a short indie film made in Belgium about a man cycling around
the shoreline seeing different kinds of people and objects around the
beaches. The theme (which was recorded during the "if_then_else"
sessions) was released as a B-side for the "Rollercoaster" single and
again as part of the "Accessories" compilation.

The Gathering's second participation to a movie was done for "Tamago -
The Quiet One" (2004). This short movie of 32 minutes is a complete
Japanese film about a teenager Kiyoshi (18) who lives in total isolation
from the outside world in his parent's kitchen. Nobody else but his
little sister Nozomi can get in contact with Kiyoshi. Through the
internet he speaks to other teenagers about his interests; drumming,
sex, games, movies, life and death. "The Quiet One" tells the story
about the phenomenon Hikikomori, Japanese teenagers isolating themselves
from the outside world and locking themselves in their room with no
other contact than the worldwide internet.

The 1992 lineup reunited in 2012 for a few special appearances.

The Gathering At MySpace



2007 A Noise Severe DVD

Tracklist:

Disc 1
"Shortest Day" – 4:41
"In Between" – 4:35
"Liberty Bell" – 5:30
"Probably Built In The Fifties" – 6:46
"Even The Spirits Are Afraid" – 6:04
"Saturnine" – 4:24
"Monsters" – 5:32
"Alone" – 4:48
"A Noise Severe" – 7:35
"Leaves" – 5:41
"Eléanor" – 6:43
"In Motion #1" – 6:07
"Waking Hour" – 6:02
"On Most Surfaces" – 6:34
"Strange Machines" – 6:35
"Adrenaline" – 4:34
"Third Chance" – 4:59
"Black Light District" – 16:18
"Travel" – 9:43

Disc 2
Homemade – a studio documentary by Danyael Sugawara
The 3 winning video of the Alone contest
Videoclip of Forgotten
Box and Waking Hour projection clip
Edison 'thank you' videoclip
The making of A Noise Severe

Label: Psychonaut Records

Not entirely sure why I bought this really, I enjoy much of The Gathering's material but I've never
really been head over heels in love with them, and generally live DVD's
(except for Cliff 'Em All) are reserved for bands I have a major boner
for, because you generally watch them twice through at most and then
just put a song on now and then. Anyway, onto the review.

It's funny, the little blurb on MA has this as "A collection of The
Gathering's heavier material" or something along those lines. I guess I
never really realised just how, well, non-heavy most of their stuff is.
There's a few moments where a proper riff will actually appear, or at
least things'll get rather depressing and loud, but none of it gets
above "loud rock band" type heavy. Indeed, a lot of it tends towards a
sort of alt-rock MOR thing, just sort of plodding along. Suffice to say I
struggled to play the whole thing through without just picking and
choosing favourite songs.

Things pick up a lot more in the last half of the set; again I would
never say it gets "heavy" but after the rather cool title track of the
album, the better songs come on; 'On Most Surfaces' is some pretty cool
sort of rocky stuff, 'Eleanor' has some rather nice dynamics and a deft
usage of double kick, and 'In Motion' has this rather nice laid back
doom-y feel to it. It's arguably some sort of doom metal, albeit the
least heavy type you could possibly imagine. Most of the songs have been
dicked around with somewhat too; there's a lot of deviation from the
studio versions, which is a pretty good thing. Indeed, most of the songs
here have some rather nice moments; a sublimely arranged instrumental
section, some celestial vocals from Anneke, even just a groovy bass line
for a bit (on the subject of bass; it's high in the mix but low on the
visuals; we hardly ever see the bass player). All in all the band wants
to sound like a rocky slowdive, Anneke wants to sound like Lisa Gerrard.
There's worse combinations, definitely.

Poo-pooing must be done, though. It's pretty obvious that all the
musicians here are extremely capable on their instruments, they're good
arrangers, songwriters and so on, so it's super frustrating when they
limit themselves to what is pleasant, occaisonally good, but rather
bland alt-rock. A few moments aside, things rarely grip you here;
there's just not really all that much emotion, just some competently
played layers of smooth-ness. A slightly nastier guitar tone, a longer,
deeper mellow section or two, some more forceful vocals, perhaps a bit
of unhinged-ness certainly wouldn't go astray. Basically, they're
properous Europeans and it shows through a bit too much. In general the
whole package- the band's stage presence, the visual production, the
music- is just way too polished.

That said, there are some good songs here and I'll probably play my
favourite songs on here fairly often. This isn't a bad DVD and Gathering
fans will love it. One final note, though: Anneke's "swing my arms
around for a whole song" dance thing is REALLY bad, she does it all the
time in the DVD, and thus I'm taking 10 points off for it.

Quality: DVD9
Format: DVD Video
Video Codec: MPEG2
Audio Codec: DVD-Audio
Video: MPEG2 Video 720x480 (4:3) 29.97fps 7700Kbps
Audio: 48000Hz 6ch 1536Kbps

[LPCM]Disponible sólo a los usuarios

The Gathering - A Noise Severe (2007)



Video: NTSC, MPEG-2 at 5 772 Kbps, 720 x 480 at 29.970 fps | Audio: AC-3 6ch. at 448 Kbps, PCM 2ch. at 1 536 Kbps
Genre: Metal | Label: The End Records | Copy: Untouched | Release Date: 17 Dec 2007 | Runtime: 124 min. | 7,22+3,96 GB (DVD9+DVD5)

Absolutely superb arena concert by The Gathering recorded in Santiago, 2007. To
think I once saw them play some pokey little club in London for about an
hour. Here we get a two hour retrospective, so all the favourites from
their hard rock / prog metal days are covered, together with amped-up
renditions of the more recent ambient-rock material.
Creative, classy and highly refined "symphonic metal" outfit from
Holland. First album (Always, 1993) was a fairly straightforward death
metal album, although heavy use of keyboards made it stand out a bit
from other such albums at the time. Followed by Almost A Dance (1994),
an album which saw the departure of "growling" vocalist Bart Smits.
Smits was replaced primarily by Niels Duffhues, a strange choice for the
band; Duffhues' punk-ish tone was decidedly out of step with the music,
and the album was largely written off as a result. A shame, because
many of the songs on Almost A Dance are quite well written. The album
also featured occasional vocals by Martine van Loon, a low-key singer
with a pretty tone but one that seldom took to the forefront of a
composition. It would appear that the seed had been planted in the
band's head to try their uniquely compelling songwriting style with a
passionate female vocalist; the result was the addition of the
incomparable Anneke van Giersbergen, an incredible singer capable of
stretching miles of emotion out of each and every syllable. The next
album, 1995's Mandylion, remains one of the very best heavy metal albums
ever recorded. van Giersbergen's poetic and haunting lyrics, paired
with the band's orchestral ruminations, resulted in darkly important
songs that seamlessly blend from one to the next. The follow-up, 1997's
Nighttime Birds, acts as a companion piece to Mandylion: similar in tone
and delivery, Birds is filled with the melodic and adventurous play
that has become the trademark of this very important band. Superheat and
If-Then-Else followed in early 2000. After a break with Century Media
following the release of If_Then_Else, the band took time off before
going into the studio to work on the 2003-released followup Souvenirs.
The Gathering will be of interest to more than just heavy metal fans:
they have the potential to appeal to countless different audiences, from
metal to progressive rock to anyone who values excellent songwriting
and powerful female vocalists.

Tracklist:
DVD1:
01. Shortest Day [5:40]
02. In Between [4:40]
03. Liberty Bell [5:27]
04. Probably Built in the Fifties [6:42]
05. Even the Spirits Are Afraid [6:04]
06. Saturnine [4:25]
07. Monsters [5:22]
08. Alone [4:57]
09. A Noise Severe [7:25]
10. Leaves [5:42]
11. Eleanor [6:26]
12. In Motion (Part I) [6:26]
13. Waking Hour [5:55]
14. On Most Surfaces [6:31]
15. Strange Machines [8:44]
16. Adrenaline [4:35]
17. Third Chance [7:15]
18. Black Light District [16:18]
19. Travel [10:04]
20. Credits [2:00]

DVD2:
01. Homemade
02. Making of 'A Noise Severe'
03. Edison "Thank you'
04. Videoclips:
- Alone by Lorenzo Bonicontro
- Alone by Nicolas Prost
- Alone by Greg Dutein
05. Promo video clip:
- Forgotten
06. Animation videoclips:
- Box
- Waking Hour

Features:
- Direct Scene Access
- Interactive Menu







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