Okay, little update.
1. The cureI've listened four of their albums now, and I have only heard one or two songs that I don't adore. The ambiance of their albums is just fabulous. The only album coming close to The Cure, talking about ambiance, is Tiamat's Wildhoney. Besides that, The Cure is mainstream, which means I can talk about it with many, many people and can turn it on without being cursed to the depths of hell! Halleluja! I don't like many bands who I can just turn on so that everybody likes it...
2. The GatheringIf there is one rock band that has explored every somewhat known corner of the genre, it is TG. From the harder metal (on e.g. Always) to one of the first groundbreaking female fronted metal albums (Mandylion) to just plain rock (HTMAP, if_then_else) to minimalistic, atmospheric rock (Souvenirs) to just atmospheric rock (Home, The west pole). I think you have had almost everything there. That means you can listen something, no matter what mood you're in. That's one of the great advantages of TG. Besides that, it's just very good music, and some of the songs are classics (Saturnine; the song with the best shifts in ambiance I've ever heard, Capital of nowhere; the first part is just reaaaally beautiful with Anne's voice, and the instrumental section can barely be beaten, and the second part is Pink Floyd, which is wooooonderful!)
3. NightwishIn my opinion still the band that mixes classical elements and metal the best. With Anette I think they did that even better than with Tarja. With Tarja they had an exceptional vocalist, but it wasn't exceptional instrumentally. With Anette the instrumental section just couldn't be better (so I'm already pretty anxious for the new album), but the vocalist could be beaten. That does not say that Anette is bad, though. Anything but bad.
It could be that my next update features Pink Floyd. I just have to listen to that a bit more.