[Cover photo credit to Kelsey Hunter Weinberger]
New Jersey-based Post Hardcore band Gatherers have released their fourth full-length album titled (mutilator. ) via No Sleep Records. Singles “gift horse” and “suffocator” have also been revealed.
Since forming in 2011, Gatherers has avoided convention when it comes to genre. While they feel that this album represents a natural progression and evolution, it also marks something of a turning point for the band.
After releasing 2015’s Quiet World and 2018’s We Are Alive Beyond Repair, they put out the single “Sick, Sad Heart” in April 2019 before parting ways with their label. They took this opportunity to create an album exactly the way that they envisioned it. They feel that this afforded them greater creative freedom.
Guitarist Anthony Gesa says:
This is the first time in two albums that we were really just able to take our time with it, and do and hear what we wanted on a record.
Weinberger adds:
At the same time, our mantra for this record was to not overthink anything. We spent a lot of time listening and talking to each other – asking what kind of vibe we were imagining – and I feel that was very beneficial, because it kept us all dialed in to the same headspace.
Gatherers also changed up their writing process. Written between April 2019 and March 2020, the band, completed by guitarist Rob Talalai, new bassist Siddhu Anandalingam and drummer Adam Cichocki, wrote in a way that accommodated Weinberger’s voice more than they had before on previous records.
The outcome is an album of “desperate, searching songs” that Weinberger refers to as “a panic attack in slow motion.” While Gatherers may have moved away from the more traditional Post-Hardcore template of their earlier records, the build power through layers of sound taking them in new directions.
