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The Gauntlet: Gathering, The |
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You always remember your first time to hear the pure euphoria that is THE GATHERING and the sweet majesty of Anneke van Giersbergen's voice. Like a river of energy her compelling voice connects with ones auditory senses and takes the listener to a place where sound paints a collage, creating something both sensual and alive. Many band strive to reach the aural heights attained by THE GATHERING, few achieve.
THE GATHERING captured Century Media's eye in 1994 shortly after they auditioned a new vocalist. Previous albums were grounded in heavy gothic-doom flavored riffs, and had pioneered the combination of death male vocals with female vocal lines. The 1994 addition of Anneke's angelic vocals was the magic that secured a record deal with Germany's Century Media Records, and subsequently placed the bands' album Mandylion and single "Strange Machines" on the Dutch charts. Nighttime Birds fan experiment in sonic majesty soon followed, and the band established a solid fan-base with several tours across Europe. 1998 saw them record and release double album How To Measure A Planet. Their first U.S. tour followed in 1999 along with a spectacular appearance at Milwaukee Metal Fest. The spellbinding tension that this band achieves on stage was captured for 2000's Superheat, recorded at several Dutch venues including the esteemed Dynamo Festival. Never a band to rest on their laurels, If_Then_Else followed with its criticism of modern day thought patterns. A new studio album came in 2003, Souvenirs, with the band turning even farther to creating lush atmospherically driven songs. Additionally, Century Media released to rave reviews the bands first DVD, In Motion, containing powerful live footage from Dynamo and Krakow, Poland.
Sleepy Buildings - A Semi Acoustic Evening, was recorded live over two nights in front of a fascinated audience at the sold-out LUX theatre in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Sleepy Buildings contains new arrangements of songs from their earliest, more obscure albums Always and Almost A Dance herein performed for the first time with the band's current line-up, their breakthrough album Mandylion, soon to be certified Gold in The Netherlands, up through the modern album If_Then_Else. Sleepy Buildings gives a complete overview of THE GATHERING's wide range of musical compositions and includes an exclusive brand new song that serves as the title for the album, 'Sleepy Buildings'.
Fans of the band will revel in the track selections career retrospective. Listeners new to THE GATHERING will find this a chance to dive in and sample the vastness of the dark-melodic triprock for which the band has become famous. Either way, Sleepy Buildings is a fascinating prism of sound
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