THE GATHERING's New Album To be Mastered On Friday

"Disclosure", the tenth studio album from Dutch/Norwegian rockers THE GATHERING, will be mastered on Friday, June 22. A 10-inch EP, "Afterlights", will be released on colored vinyl (limited to 1,000 copies) and digitally via the band's Bandcamp page.

"Disclosure" is scheduled for release on September 12 via Psychonaut Records.

In a recent interview with Greece's RockOverdose.gr web site, THE GATHERING drummer Hans Rutten stated about "Disclosure", "On and off, we worked two years on the album, and I'm really very, very happy with it. We've tried a lot of new things, but it's still THE GATHERING sound, and I think we've evolved, and I'm really happy. We had some ideas with this record. We wanted to make an album with more epic songs, longer songs, songs with dynamics, and also changes, like we did in the past, which we didn't do on 'Home' and 'The West Pole'. It just happened. We had some ideas lying around, we felt it would be cool to combine the parts we had. We had an urge to make a very atmospheric album. 'The West Pole' is more rock-orientated, it has some atmospheric parts, of course. This time, it's way more dreamy; it's not ambient, because there's a lot of rhythms involved, it's more dream rock! We already used the term trip rock, it's perfect for it. It's still THE GATHERING, you can really hear it, but we tried, of course, a lot of new elements on it. You can also hear it on the last single we have released, 'Meltdown'. . . We have some songs which are six, seven minutes and there's one other very long song which is almost nine minutes, so yes, we have a lot of long songs. Also some small songs, but especially long songs. It's one of the strongest points of THE GATHERING. Of course, we look at the past, and a lot of people really like the long songs, because we're quite good at making atmospheres; it's our strongest point. This is what we tried to achieve on this album. . . 'The West Pole', it was quite harsh, maybe. Rock songs now and then, it was really in the now. Right now, it's much more dreamy. It's the thing we wanted to do. It's a starting point with writing songs. We had a lot of ideas lying around, and we just picked up the atmospheric ones. But there's a lot of diversity in these songs, there's one song that's really industrial, kind of strange, a very slow, doomy, one song that's up-tempo - it's not happy, but there's a positive feeling going around. There's a very heavy ending of a song — of course, I can't talk a lot about it, but it also has a bit of surprise for listeners also. But it's a very diverse album. I think it's a good album, organic and electronic sounds. We worked a bit more with electronics, like we did with 'Souvenirs', and a bit with 'Home'. It's a bit back again, it just happens."

The "Disclosure" cover artwork was created by the Chilean artist Carlos Vergara Rivera. THE GATHERING keyboardist Frank Boeijen says, "The handcrafted cover art is inspired by our track 'Heroes For Ghosts', which we released last year."

"Disclosure" track listing:

01. Paper Waves
02. Meltdown
03. Gemini I
04. Heroes For Ghosts
05. Missing Seasons
06. See For Miles
07. Paralyzed
08. Gemini II

The new song "Meltdown" can be streamed below. According to the band, it is "an epic song with emotional atmosphere and a typical THE GATHERING touch. This time, though, the band also has a brand new voice coloring the song: Frank Boeijen!"

THE GATHERING's new CD includes the song "Heroes For Ghosts", which was made available for free download last year at the group's Bandcamp page. A video for the track was shot in Norway by the band's "dear friend" Marcus Moonen and can be seen below.

THE GATHERING's previous album, "The West Pole", was released in North America on June 2, 2009 via Season of Mist. The CD was issued in most of Europe on May 4, 2009 via the group's own label, Psychonaut Records.

"The West Pole" marked the recording debut of new THE GATHERING singer Silje Wergeland, who was previously in the Norwegian band OCTAVIA SPERATI. It also included two very talented guest vocalists, Anne van den Hoogen and Marcela Bovio (STREAM OF PASSION),along with other guest musicians.

Singer Anneke van Giersbergen announced her departure from THE GATHERING in 2007. She has since released four albums on her own and with her AGUA DE ANNIQUE solo project: "Air" (2007),"Pure Air" (2009),"In Your Room" (2009) and "Everything Is Changing" (2012).