During the Great Download Free For All of the mid-noughties when I was ripped from the comedy inflatable bosom of Nightwish and thrown grovelling at the awesome rock prowess of The Gathering, I was self-tasked with the necessity to obtain the band’s entire catalogue.
Fortunately, this was one of those times when such an action was worthwhile. Aside from the band’s first couple of albums, Always and Almost a Dance, which are both truly dreadful and were swiftly deleted from my collection, their other albums just kept on sending tingles.
The Gathering are another example of where the UKs coverage of quality Euro music is lacking. The downright snobbery of the UK music industry in regard to artists from beyond the North Sea frequently turns my stomach. There really are some excellent artists out there but because a minority have the monopoly on what is seen and heard in the UK, it is often the case that without the internet, nothing “non-British” would be available. Indeed, even with impending changes to the accessibility of internet this will only get worse and result in further impedence of the spread of culture from east to west while the spread of culture from west to east will continue unhindered.
Home is The Gathering’s eighth album and the last to feature Anneke van Giersbergen who, in my opinion, made the band. It seems that 2006 was the time of departure for a few female led Eurometal bands (eg Nightwish and Tarja’s departure), but rather than disappear into obscurity, van Giersbergen went on to work with Ayreon and do her own stuff and quite successfully too. Like Mandylion, it has an almost progressive concept album feel to it but the concept album vibe might just be my overactive imagination.
Towards the end of my exploration of the Scandinavian operatic goth metal movement of the late nineties and early noughties, and before branching out down the Ayreon/Gathering path, I uncovered an Austrian band called Edenbridge. Pretty much a Nightwish clone but with better pronunciation of English.
Middle class wank mag, The Guide which is usually given away in Saturday’s Guardian, once said that Fur and Gold was the album must have for the noughties coffee table and that if you were to be taken seriously by your painfully middle class Land Rover dinner party guests you should put this album on the surround sound system and look hautily at ones guests when they contemptuously deny all knowledge of its existence. And thus the hipster was born.
Benny Bohm and Sylvia Ryder from sunny Los Angeles do their stuff again. We’ve met 
Black Ships Ate the Sky – Current 93
A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC by Hayseed Dixie
Stegzy's Music Project 