Nighttime Birds

In 1995, the Dutch band THE GATHERING released their third album "Mandylion", which was to set the course for thefurther development of the band. The band wanted to break out of the previous death metal universe and from thenon consciously do without growls. In the meantime, the band was even on the verge of breaking up, before theexceptional singer Anneke van Giersbergen and The Gathering found each other and embarked on a new path thathad been successful for many years. Drummer and mastermind Hans Rutten comments on this decision as follows:"When a woman is ready to sing in a band, she usually means it more seriously than the many run-of-the-mill guyswho think bleating into a microphone will make them frontmen."Under the wing of producer Waldemar Sorychta (Samael, Tiamat, Moonspell), "Mandylion" became a milestone inmetal history.Less than two years later, the musically perfect successor followed with "Nighttime Birds". It was also to be the lastalbum of the Dutch band to contain metal elements at all. "Nighttime Birds" is a perfect, coherent (and this wordrarely applies) complete work, which musically outshines its strong predecessor Mandylion, even if the latter'scommercial success could not be fully matched.A re-release of these two albums was long overdue, because this is a band and a story that must be told 25 alsoyears later!