Album Review :
We The Gathered - We The Gathered

Band: We The Gathered

Title: We The Gathered

Label: Unsigned

Release Date: September 13, 2010

Reviewer: Joshua Clark

Tracklisting:

1. Undefined
2. Savior
3. Surrounded
4. Vision

We The Gathered are labeled as a melodic hardcore band. The band recently formed, with each of the members coming from prior bands. This five-piece band comes out of Somerset/Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The band says they are all about the message they bring with their music. The guys have a hard hitting sound and a message that is worth hearing.

As far as the sound is concerned We The Gathered pull off the hardcore sound pretty well. On the album they incorporate some melodic parts in with the hardcore to change things up a little. During “Savior” there is an example of this with a calm guitar piece in the middle that makes for a nice element. Then other examples are catchy melody lines that are entwined with the hardcore elements; it makes for a nice musical atmosphere. But through all the songs there are some really nice melodies and this allows the music to not just be total chaos. It makes a real nice contrast of heavy and serene.  They did a good job of bringing the heavy elements of hardcore yet being able to keep the songs rather catchy.

The production on this album was actually a lot better than I thought it would be for such a new band. Everything was refined just enough that you can make out the instruments from the vocals pretty well. The only issue at times was the guitars seem to be mixed in a lot louder than the drums, so the drums fade into the background a little.  Otherwise you still get a bit of a raw element to the music and vocals that works well for We The Gathered.

Lead vocalist Lance Augustine’s vocals are pretty good, they are rough and in your face, which fits perfectly with the heavy sound delivered by We The Gathered. I wouldn’t say Lance’s vocals vary a ton or are something that unique, but I enjoy his voice. Like the music, Lance is able to bring a heavy element with his vocals yet there is a bit of a melodic element to his voice as well. There is no clean singing but you could easily sing along to his shouts and screams without much trouble. Some gang vocals are present in “Surrounded.” Sometimes I feel gang vocals get overused too much and in this case they come off a lot stronger just having them used for a short segment.

Lyrically, I was rather impressed with what the band brought to the table. We The Gathered have some well thought out lyrics that not only flow well with the music but deliver a great message as well. There are messages of living solely for Christ, a dependency and need only for Christ, focusing on the sacrifice God made, being renewed in Him, and that He will always be with us from now till the end of the earth. So there is a lot of great lyrical content here and awesome to see for such a young band.

I only have a few small complaints with this album. The main one is even though the songs on there own are all solid, each of them run together a little. This is mainly just due to the vocals having a similar tone throughout but like I said this is a minor issue since Lance’s voice has some likeable qualities. There also are enough other things going on instrumentally and with the different lyrical messages that the band keeps things interesting.  Then my only other complaint is what I mentioned above, is that it would be nice if the drums were a little louder.

Overall: I was really impressed how good these guys sound for a brand new band. They sound really tight and able to play together real well for how short of a time that they have been together. This EP shows a lot of potential and some clear underlying talent in each of these guys.  It is very easy to tell the passion this band has for the music they created and for God. The band informed me they will be releasing a full length sometime this spring so be sure to look out for that, I know  that I am. But anyway this EP is a great introduction to this brand new band and definitely something worth checking out. And since the band has all these songs up for free, what do you have to lose?

Get the EP free off of their Facebook page.