UMUR
The Gathering is the 8th full-length studio album by American thrash metal act Testament. The album was released in June 1999 by Spitfire/ Burnt Offerings. The Gathering features an all-star lineup which in addition to the usual suspects, lead vocalist Chuck Billy and guitarist Eric Peterson, also feature James Murphy who returns on guitar, Steve DiGiorgio who plays the bass and Dave Lombardo who plays the drums on the album. All of them skilled and prolific metal musicians.
The music on The Gathering is powerful and very well played thrash metal. Testament brought with them the good elements from Demonic (1997), which means the raw power of that album, and then added a more melodic touch. This gives the songs a more memorable nature than the songs on Demonic. The addition of especially Dave Lombardo on the drums really gives the music a great organic touch. He is on fire on this album. The songs are generally of high quality and The Gathering is definitely one of the better Testament albums IMO.
The production is powerful and suits the music perfectly.
The Gathering is a great album by Testament and as mentioned above this is one of the better albums by the band. Still the trademark Testament style gets a bit trivial before the album is over which is why I won´t give a full 4 star rating. A 3.5 star rating is more than deserved though.