For a large part of the fans, The Gathering never really got over the departure of its singer Anneke van Giersbergen in 2007. And the album releases seem to prove them right. Since "Home", the band's deliveries have been spaced out until they had to wait nine years between their previous album "Afterwords" and this latest one "Beautiful Distortion". Produced by Attie Bauw, who was also in charge of "Home" and "How to Measure a Planet?", this new opus is considered by the band as their "most dynamic and melodic work ever" (bandcamp quote). The title and the cover symbolize "communication or lack of it, the imbalances following the pandemic and all the beauty that can come out of this distortion, like new music, ideas and perspectives" according to the singer Silje Wergeland. This is something to be curious about...
Those who know The Gathering since "The West Pole" and the arrival of Silje Wergeland on vocals won't be surprised by the content of this "Beautiful Distortion". We find again this slightly veiled and muffled voice which declaims its vocal lines in a breath for an often ethereal result. As for the music, a kind of alternative atmospheric rock, it still doesn't transpire the joy of living and on the eight tracks of the album, a good half sinks in a benevolent but unfortunately rather weighing melancholy, a feeling reinforced by slow or even very slow rhythms on the majority of the tracks.
Apart from 'In Color' which starts the album on a positive note with an aerial first part, a soft rise in power and an explosion at the end of the track, the whole quickly becomes repetitive, even boring. The fault of this succession of tracks with apathetic rhythms starting from 'When We Fall' which cruelly lack catchy elements to catch the attention, to these vocal lines with a limited emotional range and which all sound the same, and to compositions which are unnecessarily stretched. The two mid tempo tracks 'We Rise' and 'Black Is Magnified', which are rather unremarkable and too long, are followed by the very dark and even slower 'Weightless' with its unwelcome title. The only track that could be described as fast and bouncy is 'Pulse Of Life' but it too is plagued by an interminable atmospheric ending. The album ends with 'On Delay' with a classic verse/chorus pattern lacking as much variety as its predecessors.
As many bands these last years, it seems that The Gathering has privileged the production with a big work on the sounds (electronic drums, guitars, keyboards) to the detriment of the melodic research and the efficiency. Taken one by one, the tracks of this "Beautiful Distortion" are not bad and some of them could easily land in a playlist. On the other hand, listening to them attentively to the chain proves to be complicated and annoying so much they cumulate the same characteristics/defects (slowness, lack of variety). Unfortunately, it is not yet this time that The Gathering will find its former aura.