The Gathering

Well, this is a disappointment. I don't see why this album gets so much praise. Sure it's got quite good production, but the songwriting just does not cut it. It's like Low, but even weaker. What's really the worst about this album is that parts sound so damn promising and instead of working on that they end up fucking around with mediocre riffs and ideas. The backing band behind the two original members is quite spectacular. Lombardo, Digiorgio, Murphy, but their input seems to be pretty damn minimal. Lombardo does quite a nice job considering the music he has to work with, but Digiorgio and Murphy seem to be nonexistant.

The album starts of quite nice actually. DNR is fast, brutal, evil sounding, catchy. Everything you'd want from a thrash song, but it does have one flaw. Lack of lead guitar. That's one complaint about this album that I have. James Murphy plays on this album and from the amount of lead guitar on here it's hard to tell. Down for Life is more midpaced and upbeat, but still quite a nice song.

After that the album starts wavering. Eyes of Wrath is crap, no riff intensity and overall boring. True Believer has a really fucking catchy middle break with some nice soloing, but the rest of the the song is basically like Eyes of Wrath. 3 Days of Darkness has a cool chanting part along with a nice riff, but the rest of the riffs and arrangements sound forced and make the song sound goofy and modern. After that we get a sweet Death Metal-esque song in Legions of the Dead. Some killer riffs in this and Chuck's vocals are growled. This is this album's Dog Faced Gods.

The rest.....filler and uninspired. It's not worth the time.

So after starting out with two great songs, going off kilter and having two songs that are half good, and then one more good one before totally going off the deep end for the 2nd half of the album we get a really sub-par album. At least it's better than the last abortion Testament gave us.

Just go get the Legacy, or download the first two songs and Legion of the Dead.