Beyond The Ruins

Following on from yesterdays's post about No Plan, I figured that today I would rabbit on about a related older band.

Gather was not a band that I was into or even really knew about when they were active, which was 2004-07. Probably part of the reason that I wasn't really aware of them at the time is that they were an anarchist vegan straight edge band, and back then I was definitely not interested in anything like that. I think around that time I was mainly listening to Isis and 80s hardcore. Anyway, Gather was a band fronted by Eva (Power Alone, No Plan) and I decided to pick up one of their records and give it a go.

'Beyond The Ruins' was Gather's full length LP, released in 2006 by Catalyst Records, and recently repressed by Indecision Records in a very limited quantity. Indecision pressed 200 copies on vinyl, with three different colours of vinyl in a brand new cover, which I think looks great. They also somehow got hold of 50 copies of the original pressing on clear vinyl, hand stamped the labels and popped them into these new sleeves. I picked up one of the clear copies just because I think it looked the nicest. Clear vinyl is the best.

This band contains 3 of the 5 members of Power Alone, but it sounds very different. This record definitely sounds like a more typical 'vegan straight edge' band with lots of sounding way (if that makes sense). Musically this reminds me of Harvest, even down to the vocals. Eva's vocals sound very different on here to the style she has adopted in Power Alone, and whilst I think the newer vocal style works better, the vocals on here definitely suit this style of hardcore. This is a pretty heavy and dark record, and I'm happy to have finally discovered it, even if it is 16 years after it first came out.