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It took over seven years from your debut album to "Touch In The Dark" this is a really long period of time, isn't it? What happened apart from the music in this time? Yes, it has been a long time due to certain changes in the music-scene, like a lot of clubs in Holland still struggle to survive or had to close down because they didn't get subsidised. (In Holland a club could get money from the government so they could program non-commercial bands.) Also another law killed al lot of clubs, the "geluidshinderwet", which meant a restriction on the amount of decibels produced by a club. So putting on live bands simply produced too much noise according to this law. As a result of this, venues decided not to program live bands anymore. And a lot of the clubs had to go commercial. (Stand on their own) so they play on safe, programming more dance events and less (unknown) live bands. Holland has always known a solid metal- and (punk)rock scene, but the Gothic metal-scene as we know it now, has never been that big. Dutch gothic was mainly dominated by electronics (Industrial) so it was not done to play live with an acoustic drum kit. (It happened several times that on a Goth festival Asrai was the only band with a drum kit) They cyber-gothic is still a very big hit, so it was more difficult for us to get gigs. Thanks to the 80's revival more people got interested in the more conventional Gothic Rock with guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. We mainly used this period to grow as musicians. Seven years are a long time for a person to develop, can you give a conclusion what changed in your mood towards the music within this seven years? Of course your point of view will develop through the years. It's a natural process of getting older. But our interest in the kind of music we make never changed. We all have our roots in the old punk/wave rock. When we were given the chance to sign on Transmission records we realised this was an opportunity to grow and explore other possibilities in making music. Making some kind of concessions is a part of it. Compared with your older works, where do you see differences and where are the parallels to the new album? The biggest differences with our older work and what we're doing now is working with a new line-up. Different faces and a new, refreshing and also recognisable point of view in making music. Working with samples and keyboards is a new dimension. The parallel is the chemistry between the musicians, this is a must when creating music with each other, and putting our emotions into our music. There are many girls in your band does this have a influence on your work in any way?. Women have different logics than men, so that gives an interesting twist on everything. Thematically your lyrics are quite dark... where do they come from? The lyrics are very personal. They are reflections of our daily lives. The cover-picture of "Touch In The Dark" contains many gothic-stereotypes. What do they - the owl, the angel, the roses - mean to you? In the end we agreed with this concept because the artwork is very representative for our kind of music, so it's very recognisable to people who have never heard about us. We wanted Marcel de Jong to design the artwork, we've known him and his work for some time, and he has made more designs for us in the past. So we know the way he works and he knows what we want. We wanted something dark and spooky, starting with a ring of roses as a passageway to another world. Our recordcompany recomended Carsten Dresher to do the artwork for our cd. After various concepts we agreed to the final lay-out. Carsten came up with the Angel (For us personaly the angel doesn't mean that much, but it has a certain serenity) the rest of the artwork contains many personal details.The roses we wanted from the beginning, the same goes for the puple base-colour. Many of the statue-photos inside the booklet were made by Manon. We've all individually chosen parts of our lyrics to accompany our photo's. And the animals all have their 'pagan' meaning, like the owl representing inner wisdom, the bat representing demons and spirits in medieval Europe. Ravens represent magic, mystery, and sacred law as well as battle, guardians through the cyclus of death and rebirth. You recorded your album in two different studios, why did you choose these two and are you happy with the results? We wanted Roman to be our producer but we had a problem with our budget, we solved this by recording some of the parts in Roman's studio and the other parts in the Excess studio. Allthough we're very happy with the results, we've decided next time to do all the recordings in one studio. Any funny "accidents" happened in the studio you can tell? We've had more fun afterwards looking back, but making the special noises was very funny, specially the ones where we used the dog Yawin. And when we where at Aichtal there was a lot of snow, I guess seeing Karin walking through the snow was an adventure. You made a video for "Pale Light". I think this was a new experience for you? Can you tell something about the recording session for the video, any things that happened? Yes it was a new experience for us. We were very keen on Marcel de Jong to do our video clip. He had some very good ideas for the clip. Fully animated, very darkbut this idea went a little over budget, unfortunally....For an impression of the original concept you can visit his website: www.marceldejong.com So we had to start all over again with making plans for the video. Marcel came up with a very good idea. So we shot the clip at our rehearsal studio with Marcel de Jong and Jelle Swetter. In the end it became a video clip with a very high contrast and kaleidoscopic kind of circles who lead you to another scene. Is there one song on the CD you like most? Why? Karin: Restless, it moves me to tears. And In front of me; it's a good song for me to kick ass on drums. Margriet: Restless, Touch in the Dark. I like the way that we experiment with my voice. Child: The oriental atmosphere and my son "singing" on it. Martin: Difficult, so much to choose from. Every song has a charm of its own. Rik: I like Child very much. I love the heavy git's in the chorus Manon: Shadows. I really like the feeling of that song. I like both versions of this song a lot. You might be bothered by that question, but with THE GATHERING comes one of the most famous (former-)gothic metal bands from the same small country as you do how do you feel their presence in the scene? Holland does not have a very easy music scene. I think it's difficult to explain what their presence really means for the scene. I don't know if they fit in the Gothic scene anymore. But I think that they where the first band to bring this kind of music to a larger audience, and sometimes this is difficult to accept for the underground scene. There are more very talented bands and musicians who work hard and never get a change to break through. This kind of music will never be as big as mainstream music. That's why you have to work harder for your success. But it also makes the music more special. But the Gathering still explore different kinds of styles in music, very atmospheric and still one of the better bands from Holland. They levelled the path for other bands to get the chance to be appreciated by a larger audience. Do any plans for a tour or some festivals exist? Yes there are, we're working on it. Famous last words... anything to be added... Let's rock to the end of days and leave beautiful corpses. (dod) am 23.05.2004 |
