FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Worm Ouroboros dive in without hesitation, never shy about setting themselves adrift on the musical currents they generate. On the surface, they wallow in beauty and atmosphere. But after repeated listens you can get beneath the surface, into the substrata of the songs themselves, which is where this album’s rewards really dwell.
[Autumn Aurora] is an album that, listening to it now in retrospect, both continued and solidified the group’s pagan and nature themes and thick, heavy sound.
The first of several Drudkh reissues from Season of Mist, Forgotten Legends captures the band’s early rumblings – a small collection of long songs recorded in the summer of 2002 and released as the band’s official debut.
Album review by Laura Wiebe Taylor
When Anneke van Giersbergen announced her departure from The Gathering it was a shock – for many fans but for her bandmates as well. But shock doesn’t have to lead to death or paralysis, and in a sense The Gathering had been down this road before. Reinvention is a familiar enterprise for the Dutch alt rockers, who started out as a doomy metal band with male vocals in the early nineties. Van Giersbergen’s entry on lead vocals was merely one shift, the eventual transition from aggression to shoegazing another. Though Anneke was the voice and forward face of The Gathering for well over a decade, her decision to leave meant another change, not the end.