The Mean Fiddler, London

13th June 2003

Venue: The Mean Fiddler, London     Date: 13th June 2003

Setlist: Golden Grounds, Nighttime Birds, These Good People, Even the Spirits are Afraid, Analog Park, Broken Glass, Travel, Amity, Eleanor, Saturnine, Monsters, Red is a Slow Color
Encores: You Learn About It, Souvenirs, Black Light District

The previous time that The Gathering paid a visit to London, My Dying Bride replaced them as headliners and to my regret, when I arrived at the venue, The Gathering had just left the stage. This time I was determined to be there in good time and having heard horror stories about the attendance figures at earlier dates on the tour, it was an enormous relief to arrive at the Mean Fiddler and to find an audience of several hundred ready to see the band play.

The set opener of 'Golden Grounds' suffered from a poor sound but this was put right in time for the band to follow it with an excellent heavy version of 'Nighttime Birds' which the crowd loved. It was quite a change to see vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen fronting the band with a guitar strung around her neck but then the band have undergone a few changes since I saw them on the 'How To Measure a Planet' tour in 1999.

The set flowed quite nicely with the band concentrating largely on its more recent material. The drum sound was finally corrected during 'Even The Spirits are Afraid' and by the time they get around to playing something from the highly contentious 'How to Measure a Planet' album the crowd, or at least most of it, were really enjoying themselves. The only negative side was that the sound of people chatting loudly to each other could clearly be heard above the band. These days the music of The Gathering relies on increasingly atmospheric and ambient soundscapes rather than the heavy riffs which could be found in the music that they wrote in the mid 1990s. I know that on other occasions the band have requested the crowd to keep the noise down and I was rather disappointed that they didn't do so here.

'How To Measure a Planet' can prove to be a difficult listen but on this occasion the slower pace of 'Travel' was the perfect follow up to the crunchy 'Broken Glass' and the crowd responded warmly. "Thank you so very much," declared Anneke in addressing the crowd for perhaps only the 2^nd time in the set. A stripped down 'Amity' allowed Anneke's voice to shine and the follow-up 'Eleanor' really fired the crowd's enthusiasm. They leapt around and sang along quite loudly while Anneke left the microphone and conducted the crowd singing. An altogether heavier tune, it reinforced my impression that the crowd were keen to hear some of the heavier and perhaps older material.

The closing section of the set, beginning with 'Saturnine', didn't work so well for me. They reproduced the heavy, grinding riff of 'Monsters' but not some of the on-disk magic and 'Red is a Slow Colour' descended into a serious instrumental jam as Anneke joined in again on guitar and René Rutten gave the theramin a good workout. Then suddenly they were gone from the stage. It was a very bizarre and anticlimactic end to the set.

Of course they returned, smiling broadly at the crowd who clearly felt the desire to hear more from the band. "Any Suggestions?", asked Anneke. We got the new single 'You Learn about it', one of the outstanding tracks on 'Souvenirs' and for me the highlight of the set. Then the new album's title track that was also very good before they closed the show out with the whole of the lengthy 'Black Light District'. A strange choice of closing tune, it build slowly, one might say ponderously, until the whole band is involved and finishes with a short, heavy section. It doesn't work for me on disk and it didn't work for me in the live environment either.

So all in all, a strangely mixed evening during which at one turn one felt mesmerized by the beauty of Anneke's voice during some of the old and the new tunes and at the other turn, confused if not actually bored by some of the band's extended, atmospheric passages. While one was left with the impression that the band are an extremely tight and strong unit, confident of their music and the direction in which they want to take it, one does wonder whether or not the band's fan-base, built largely on the success of the Gothic Metal masterpieces of 'Mandylion' and 'Nighttime Birds' will stick by them.

Charlie - 2003