Serías un buen posmoderno si supieras leer ⚸

The Gathering: Nighttime Birds (1997)

In the long, complicated, sonically adventurous, but undoubtedly angry-young-men-dominated history of heavy metal, there have been few artists capable of reducing hardened head-bangers into piles of sensitive, blubbering mush quite like The Gathering’s Anneke van Giersbergen.

To say that van Giersbergen’s classically-trained soprano helped redefine the role of (and expand opportunities for) women in the macho world of heavy metal is no overstatement – especially within more extreme sub-genres, where ‘80s pioneers like Doro Pesch and Sabina Classen were few and far between.

And, no, we will NOT be discussing the Great Kat!

Anyway, Anneke certainly altered The Gathering’s career trajectory, as the Dutch band had struggled to develop a distinctive death/doom sound with their first two, male-fronted LPs (Bart Smits featured on 1992‘s Always, Niels Duffhues on ‘93’s Almost a Dance), until they dared to be different.

With van Giersbergen on board, the new line-up quickly proved the feasibility of this radical study in contrasts via ‘95’s groundbreaking Mandylion, but I think it was the ‘97 follow-up, Nighttime Birds, that brought their novel vision and chemistry to full flower, when it was released 25 years ago.

By now you must be thinking: “Will you stop with the set-up, already, and tell us what the hell kind of sonic amalgam you’re talking about?”

OK, OK, Nighttime Birds staples such as “The May Song,” “New Moon, Different Day,” and the transcendent title track found a way to blend crushing, doomy power chords, ethereal melodies, psychedelic keyboards, and van Giersbergen’s deliberate, vibrato-laden soprano with incredible ease.

And while the lyrics varied from surprisingly good (the environmental metaphors of “The Earth is My Witness”) to surprisingly lame (“Confusion”), let’s not forget English was the band’s second language, and every song here still managed to strike an emotional chord by alternating gothic subtlety and metallic power.

The evocative “Kevin’s Telescope” teased their next album’s (the double How to Measure a Planet?) thematic pivot from nature to science, and come stark album-closer “Shrink,” Anneke is backed by nothing but mournful piano, hinting that sounds other than metal would soon enter the group’s lexicon.

Which they most certainly did (alt-rock, trip hop, etc.) on later efforts like 2000’s If_Then_Else, ‘02’s Black Light District EP and ‘05’s Souvenirs, all of which yielded compelling songs in a myriad of forms, but seemingly couldn’t hold Anneke’s interest enough to forestall her departure in 2007.

Today, I’m told (though I couldn’t confirm) that our heroine has apparently joined the sad parade of reality TV music competition judges in her native Holland?

No matter: the greatest legacy of van Giersbergen and Nighttime Birds was that they both legitimized and incentivized countless heavy metal bands of mostly European and extreme extraction (Nightwish, Lacuna Coil, After Forever, Arch Enemy, etc.) to welcome female musicians into their ranks, and opened the doors of inclusion to another notorious ‘boys club.’