UMUR
"Almost a Dance" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Dutch doom/ goth metal band The Gathering. The album was released in 1993 through the Foundation 2000 label. This is the last album by the band before they would change direction with "Mandylion (1995)" adding a female lead vocalist.
The music on "Almost a Dance" is doom/ goth metal with clean male vocals and occasional clean female vocals. As on the debut "Always (1992)" the music is very melodic with some rather dominant keyboards for the genre. A great treat as keyboardist Frank Boeijen is a skilled musician. He has a great style. The tracks are generally well written and performed but unfortunately there´s one thing that really drags the album down. I really enjoyed the growling vocals by Bart Smits on the debut but he has been replaced with Niels Duffhues on "Almost a Dance". The latter´s clean vocals sound rather strained and there´s almost no recognisable moments in the melody lines. Therefore his singing comes of as weak and monotone. A real listening experience killer.
Besides Niels Duffhues questionable performance, the musicianship is solid.
The production on the album is allright but nothing special.
An otherwise good album is unfortunately destroyed by an annoying singer and a sure 3 star rating, as a consequence, ends up a small 2 star rating. I end up rather frustrated because of this and I can´t really recommend the album to fans of the genre and maybe not even to the hardcore fans of the band who haven´t heard this one yet. Fortunately Niels Duffhues would leave the band after the release of "Almost a Dance" and The Gathering would have to re-think their approach which led to the inclusion of female lead vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen to the lineup on the next album "Mandylion". "Mandylion" would prove to be the band´s big breakthrough.