Review from metallized.it
http://www.metallized.it/recensione.php?id=2759begin quick translation:
I confess, i'm not deep into The Gathering. I know that's a big fault as reviewer, but in this case i believe it's an advantage: The West Pole is a greatly awaited album cause the change behind the microphone of the most representative and charismatic member of the dutch band, that is Anneke Van Giersbergen. A member so important to represent the symbol of not the band only, but of an entire movement.
Thus, free of prejudices, i'm going to judge this album for what The Gathering are today, not for what they've been, avoiding useless and counterproductive comparisons with the past (even illustrious and important).
Here we start.
The opening marks his sign, When Trust Becomes Sound is instrumental guitar oriented (a general trend in all The West Pole). It scratches us and strips us of certainties and illusions, leaving us naked, alone with our soul that try to escape from the inexorable comparison with herself. She remains, the music. We have no choice but to abandon ourserves to her.
With the following Treasure, the mood changes: the song is crisp, direct, thoughtless and introduces us the new singer Silje Wergeland, norwegian with a noteworty experience in Octavia Sperati. Her voice fits perfectly in the new course inaugurated by the dutch band: the sound is no more legacy to the so-called trip-rock of last two albums, it takes instead more alternative solutions. The singer proves herself technically very valid, clean and precise in the whispered parts as in the more hard ones.
The only criticism i make is that the norwegian concentrated more in the formal technical perfection of her perfomance than in the emotional side (can i blame her, seen the burden on her?), but anyway her performance is high level.
A distorted arpeggio introduces us to All You Are, song on the line of the previous regarding structure and feeling: probably the most banal and easy in the lot, anyway embellished by high-class arrangement.
The album's central part loses a bit of accessibility compared to the rest. But is there where The Gathering set free their more experimental creativity. From the title track to Pale Traces it becomes more atmospheric and sophisticated, maybe more difficult, but way more satisfactory once assimilated: guitars cease of saturate amplifiers (they'll be back to put the amplifiers on fire in the last two songs) leaving more room to arcs (arrangend with taste and competence, are widespread in the album, but here prevailing), synt and even piano (You Promised Me a Symphony). It's in this aseptic and almost lysergic dimension that the dutch's musical quest comes to fulfilment.
Their aesthetic and creative sense, seeking the supreme Oratian marrige between art and genius
(NDT: don't blame the translator!), artifice and inspiration. These songs are little gems full of feeling, magnificent.
The last two tracks bring back the freshness of the first ones, until the wonderful instrumental end of No One Spoke, where a rejoicing of arcs, keyboards and guitars seals with a wonderfully malinconc mood this great return.
Production is almost perfect, superlative in some moments with choice of sounds and effects, cleanliness e attention to details (in this, Pale Traces made me cry to miracle several times). A big note deserve the voice doublings, really great, sign of the great value of the singers (NDT besides Silje): Marcela Bovio (Ayreon, Stream of Passion, Elfonia) and Anne van den Hoogen (dutch singer, of which i don't know the musical career) show themselves behind the micophone respectively in Pale Traces and in Capital of Nowhere.
Unique, light, comforting, graceful in the front, but devastating in the intimate, with The Gathering talent wins for real. The true talent of a superlative group, that stands neat ad quiver in the soul.
The West Pole passes the exam brilliantly. Here there is everything,
(NDT dont't blame the translator for the following...) the right-wing bourgeois behaviour, the left-wing torment, the global crisis and the Obama's hope, the clean civilization and the grunge deacy. All those not able or not willing to understang them, let's 'em behind, caged in their past.
end of translation
I apologise for the dirty translation: it was a very convolute italian review.
Hi