The Gathering are the new Black Sabbath when it comes to doom. I am fine with this. It's just the 3rd album that has soft female vocals over melancholy metal, that is not satisfied with just stopping at at metal. It's three minutes into the first song before we get the crunch of heavy guitars. "Scurry" finds them conforming more closely to the kind of fuzz drenched lumber expected from the genre. It also falls in line with your more typical female fronted doom. Male vocals harmonize with her. She voice is pretty impressive with the range to soar over the song when she feels like it. After a few listens it proves early on this is an album I can just let play as it flows with smooth dynamics that do not tire.
There is a moody cello intro to "Blue Jay' guitar does kick in half way into the song, but it is more of an atmosphere texture, a storm cloud that never thunders down The drumming continues to impress on this song. At 11 minutes the longest song is "Lament' which is impressive for a genre know to be ponderous. It opens sounding like depressive progressive. It drifts along on gray waters. Darker than Not rock bands, but more mellow and less sorrowful than doom. It does slowly begin to build heading towards the midway mark. The drumming is more intricate and busier than what a doom drummer would do. Before the song is over it does however get into a sludged out heaviness. By sludge think more Yob than Neurosis.
It is going to take the last song "Autocrat's Fool' to really tip the balance in regard to what they are. It does get more metallic and in a way that falls loosely into doom. The song works of more of a a hypnotic drone than crushing you. Until the final 30 seconds. I will round this up to a 9, I think it needs to grow on me more as it's very atmospheric and not what I was expecting going into this.
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