The Gathering – Always...

This peaceville reissue is fantastic, sounds great and the CD case and booklet are visually appealing. I only wish that the original brightness of the album cover was retained. This version's cover looks a bit dark, but really that's a tiny complaint and this is a great version to get.

The second wave of doom metal brought bands of great melodical quality such as: Sadness, Anathema, Tristitia and the one at hand: The Gathering. These dutch approached the genre taking a wide angle, circumventing the heavy riffs and mid paced tempos with an awesome keyboard set of arrangements.
Let´s take it for granted that if were not because of the magic imprinted by keyboardist Frank Boeijen then the album "Always" should not have been what it was. Because all the main songs such as the profound angst ridden "The mirror waters" with its classy slow doom riff and strong march like cadence drumming wouldnt have been strong enough without the cold synth melody that surrounds the deep thight voice of Bart Smits. Sum up the pitched lines in "Subzero" that resembles the apparition of a bird or the beautiful keyboard accompaniments in "King for a day" and "Always" when the solid but sonorous growl from bart intertwines with the chorus line of Marike Groot in which the keyboard once again works as sort of a web that unifies everything.

"Always" is a dramatic album, but it doesn´t let just the riff or the drums becomes the patent for the listener to get into it, they bet high on the keyboard and in there resides a great portion of its success, they dared to give it a prominent feel and exposition through the final mix, that is intrepid for that time in which the album was made.
While other bads certainly used keyboards back then, the keyboard always remained as a muddled and scattered as simple accompaniments or background, in "Always" that is not the case, the keyboards sometimes goes developing as the melodic centre where the rest of instrumentation takes hold or achieves his role perfectly as accompaniment but not as a shadow, but as a light that intertwines the wholeness.

Very good album that has growed well with the years.