The Gathering – Nighttime Birds – Review

The Gathering

Nighttime Birds (Century Media)
by Chaz Thorndike

Bordering on plain old heavy Goth, The Gathering write thoughtful, complex, beautifully majestic music with just enough underlying guitar crunch to be considered heavy. With the sweet angelic voice of Anneke van Giersbergen (spell check’s gonna have a field day with that one) calling out like a beacon in a din of false intentions, the songs roll like waves, soothing in their motion, yet splitting apart in white-tipped foam at their peaks and crashing heavily upon solid shores in the end. The voice could be considered siren-like, but there is no ill will. And to say she sings like an angel is to dismiss the power, the pure human longing channeled through her vocal chords, dragging out your confessions, your guilt, and inspiring you to make resolutions you’ll probably never live up to once the music stops.

But that ain’t her fault. My main problem with The Gathering lies in a reliance upon Anneke’s voice to astound in order to cover up for a pretty boring, formulaic song. And likewise, Anneke’s own overdoing it to the point of preposterous pop. When she’s belting it out, Bonnie Tyler and Pat Benetar have a rival for power ballad songstress. I mean, a Hammond organ in “Third Chance” and a disco-fever chorus that gets the blood pumping like that scene in Footloose when they played “Holding Out for a Hero?” Isn’t that taking things just a little far? But sure, The Gathering create beautiful music: Uplifting without being hokey, intelligent without being pretentious, melodic without being confectionery.