Creative Freedoms: An Interview with The Gathering

Silje Wergeland (vocals), Frank Boeijen (keyboards) & Hans Rutten (drums)

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“Is it a special song…?” ponders Hans Rutten; “Well I think its a very good song, there’s always something special about your songs. It is long, it is very atmospheric, it is totally new…”

There is a sigh of frustration just beside him. Quietly, shaking her head in dismay, the band’s singer starts to smirk; “…you are so Dutch, it’s unbelievable.”

“I’m so Dutch?” asks Hans bemused, as both him and keyboardist Frank Boeijen turn to their Norwegian singer Silje Wergeland. She pokes the drummer’s shoulder with her finger, whilst teasing; “Yes…. ‘is it special?’…” her voice shifts from teasing to outright laughing; “It’s special! It’s a special song!”

Hans concedes, as the singer goes in to hysterics beside him; “It is a fucking special song!”

“The most special song there is…” Frank starts; “…in the whole universe!”

This, of course, is The Gathering. Completed by guitarist René Rutten and bassist Marjolein Kooijman, the present line up has been together since 2009, having already released their ninth album The West Pole. Having now become a more stable unit, the band have preceded their forthcoming tenth album with a digital single, Heroes For Ghosts, which represents everything that the band have now become.

“I think The West Pole was a lot of new things.” begins Silje, as she starts to describe why the song is so important; “The band were thinking of new things when they were making the songs. I was new, I tried to think ‘new’ when I wrote the vocal lines and lyrics and stuff – it was testing things. Also, I think for the band to make normal songs with a new vocalist maybe was a bit strange, so they wanted to reinvent themselves a bit. But you develop all the time, and we’ve developed together and now we know each other. This song has been developed for some time.”

She turns to the others, as she expresses; “I think for me and for you, it is very in here.” she moves her hands to her chest, symbolizing her heart, before turning back; “It is very us.”

“ We’re not the most sellable band in the world ”
- Frank Boeijen

The path that led The Gathering to this point has been a long and windy one. Certainly the band’s shifts in personnel have been well documented over the years, not least of all the departure of well loved vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen. But perhaps the most difficult challenge for the band has been the establishment of their own sense of independence and creative freedom. Back when the band first began to make a real mark in the European metal scene with their third album Mandylion, The Gathering looked poised to be the leaders of the burgeoning female-fronted goth metal movement. Uncomfortable with feeling pigeon-holed in to such a genre, the band’s innate experimental nature would lead them to work on 1998′s double-CD How To Measure A Planet?, a distinctly different album that would mix psychedelic rock with influences such as Radiohead and Massive Attack, pioneering their more unusual sound for the rest of their career. Needless to say, this sudden drift away from the sound that made them successful – and profitable – made their label at the time, Century Media, nervous.

“They wanted ten three-minute songs, which were radio-friendly, with Anneke on the front cover.” explains Hans, as Frank interjects; “They didn’t demand to do this, but they suggested it too many times, y’know?”

Hans nods, adding his own thoughts; “But in a kind of harsh way. With How To Measure A Planet? it exploded really because they changed a title on the album [from Liberty Bell to Sitting In A Chair], to make it more commercial, and they changed it on all the promo CDs, and for me that was ridiculous.”

“On the other hand, we changed on How To Measure A Planet?…” he continues, playing devil’s advocate; “… and they were losing a sort of milk cow, financially speaking. I think they had high hopes, and in the end they did it with Lacuna Coil, in the commercial aspect.”

“They are there to sell albums, that is their main goal.” Frank adds; “They want to sell as much as possible in the independent market, and beyond that, and they succeeded. They had a fantastic promotion team that could do really well, because we were everywhere, y’know? All the bigger bands back then like Tiamat and Moonspell, they were everywhere. In every store there were posters. I have to say they did a good job. But there’s a limit, y’know, when you can shape a band – at some point it’s like, don’t go there. It’s ours. Of course I can understand their point of view, because they’ve invested money as well. ”

Sombrely, the keyboardist comments; “We’re not the most sellable band in the world.”

“But it’s a choice, and ours to make.” finishes Hans.

“There’s always two sides of these things.” adds Silje, speaking from an outside view. As a member of Octavia Sperati, she has her own experiences with Candlelight Records, though admittedly that was a much healthier relationship; “For us it was never a big fight, we had a good relationship with them until we split up. They suggested stuff, and we would try, or just say no we don’t want to do that. But they run a business, we are artists.”

“There are always clashes.” Hans notes, before Silje interjects; “… and there should be one, and then you meet in the middle I think. I also think lately so much is changing in the music business that they get desperate. Record labels, who needs a record label anymore?”

She laughs; “Really, we don’t sell records anyway.”

“ I’m thinking about pulling the Psychonaut titles off Spotify, because in the end it’s not working ”
- Hans Rutten

For The Gathering, independence seemed the only way. Initially just a label to reissue the band’s early catalogue on, Psychonaut became the label they would release their output on after parting ways with Century Media after the album if_then_else. Doing things this way seems to have both good and bad points.

“You have a lot of freedom to do whatever you want.” explains Hans; “On the other hand, it’s still a very small label. Sometimes there is paranoia to be your own label boss but also be in the band, the only band. There was also the idea to sign other bands, but then the music industry changed a lot in the 90s and 2000s, with the burning and the downloading.”

… and the reoccurring problem in every musician’s life in the modern age, signed or unsigned, rears its ugly head. As both a band and their own record label, The Gathering have seen how the changing industry has affected the financial stability of musicians and those that work in the industry. This hasn’t been helped by the legitimization of legal music streaming through sites like Spotify. As users of the service who happen to be fans of The Gathering might be aware, nearly half the band’s catalogue was removed from the service when Century Media very publicly and controversially removed their presence from the site. Whilst the band admit they like the service, they can understand the reasons for the move.

“Spotify is a good thing… on the other hand, there is a lot of money involved, and the money is not going to the artists.” says Hans, sounding a bit frustrated; “Again, the artist is the laughing stock, financially speaking. You get 0.00002 per full track streaming, which is nothing, it’s a joke. And I can imagine doing this, too, y’know? I’m thinking about pulling the Psychonaut titles off Spotify, because in the end it’s not working. A couple of songs works, yeah, as a promotional tool, like Century Media are doing right now. They have a couple of songs from each album.”

“Its a strange thing, because Spotify says ‘Yeah, but it’s just streaming, we don’t give away the songs’. Okay, but when streaming gets this easy, you also own the song.” comments Frank.

Agreeing, Hans concludes; “It isn’t like you can only listen to it five times, it is limitless. So I can understand Century Media’s actions.”

“I think it is a really complex problem, which won’t be quickly solved.” Frank begins, discussing the problem as a whole; “… and things are always changing. The musicians are what we call ‘the lul’, which means they’re fucked! It’s always the musicians, but again, I also have to say musicians are always too late to these kinds of things. They are also too lazy to figure out how to do it more cleverly, to indeed get money from these kinds of things. I think that will always be the case. But I don’t know if there is a solution, when you digitalize music it is just there, it is abstract. Everybody can take it. That’s why we believe in physical things like vinyl, CDs, t-shirts, that’s why we do stuff with our webshop, we believe in that. Because then you really have something that you can touch, it is not abstract.”

“The important thing is to be there now, watching now, what is happening, because everything is changing right now.” adds Silje, speaking for musicians as a whole; “It’s down times for the music industry, and that’s when everyone starts getting creative, thinking new solutions, new collaborations, what was management before might not be management tomorrow. They have to think differently, record labels and all that stuff. So I think the most important thing for a band to do right now is to be there, and be on top of things, and think… differently.”

“ There will be no limits, I think, as far as how the songs are going to be ”
- Silje Wergeland

That appears to be The Gathering’s modus operandi, proven by their recent actions. The band have chosen to release Heroes For Ghosts as a free mp3 single, and whilst in the past a band’s first single might be a quick three minute pop song with a catchy chorus, Heroes For Ghosts is anything but quick, and doesn’t even have a conventional chorus. Its long length and more progressive song structure make it the choice of single for a band who realise that they are now working in the digital age, when the CD single no longer sells, Spotify is preferred over radio, and music videos are watched on Youtube rather than MTV.

Which is probably just as well, because when are MTV going to play a mammoth 11 minute music video?

“Frank knew a guy from the city that we live, a very enthusiastic guy.” states Hans; “We talked a bit and he had some plans.”

Frank nods, adding; “He was so energetic about the new song, really wanted to do the video. So we gave him the chance to go to Norway and film.”

The video, whilst containing some abstract imagery of lights, clouds and water as well as clips of the Silje singing, centres around the relationship and subsequent breaking up of its two lead characters. Whilst the video itself has a mostly clear plot, the lyrics aren’t entirely so, though Silje says the video and song are about similar things; “I suppose it is about breaking up. You’ve probably had break ups in your life, and you had happy moments and some really bad ones, and it’s how it goes on a scale, and then coming to the conclusion of calling it a day.”

“There’s two parts of the song,” comments Hans, talking about the music itself; “The first part is typical Gathering with a slow core kind of thing, so that is nothing new. But the second part we do something new, I do think that is very interesting.”

So what he means is, it’s special. Unless, of course… the rest of the album is like this?

“This is very much a ballad.” Silje notes; “There are some more upbeat songs.”

Frank hints even further; “We have a little more energetic songs, but they won’t be really typical short songs. Most of them will be quite long, and more experimental than The West Pole.”

“There will be no limits, I think, as far as how the songs are going to be.” Silje adds; “They’ll be how they are created.”

“We’re still in the process of finishing them, but you get the idea.” Franks says, before revealing; “The main goal now is to release it in April.”

That seems like a long time, but with the band clearly used to each other, not bound by commercial expectations and having an almost overwhelming sense of creative freedom, perhaps such a long time is really needed for album #10 to really take shape. It looks like fans might have to wait just that little bit longer; but then, good things always come to those who wait.

Written by James Donovan
More: Interviews, The Gathering