GATHERERS Sign To No Sleep Records, Release New Single

Bleak, sinister, haunting; rock band Gatherers have broken a year’s silence to announce that they have signed with renowned indie label No Sleep Records. The band embarks on this new partnership with the premiere of their new single “Ad Nauseam, I Drown,” on FLOOD. Gatherers have also announced an exclusive 7” square lathe – limited to 60 copies and available for pre-order at nosleeprecords.com/collections/gatherers.

“The song is about the facade of relevance. And where it sits on the spectrum between purposeful art and undignified bullshit,” the band shares. “These days it often feels like we’re being smothered in the latter.”

Vocalist Rich Weinberger adds: “We’re proud to have a new home at No Sleep. Over the years, Chris and the label have championed a beautiful culture around music, community and work ethic (coffee) that was very much needed. To have those things attached to our band is a breathe of fresh air. We’re excited to undertake our fourth album alongside our new family.”

About Gatherers:

New Jersey’s Gatherers don’t operate like most other bands. Since forming in Bayonne, NJ in 2011, the five-piece has continually defied the constructs and constrictions of genre, and refused to succumb to convention.

That’s something that’s been amplified as they’ve worked on their forthcoming fourth full-length album. While these new songs are another natural progression and evolution for the five-piece, 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 with Equal Vision Records, they put out the single “Sick, Sad Heart” in April 2019 and then parted ways with the label.

Yet while many bands might have balked at the uncertainty that entailed, Gatherers took it as an opportunity to make the exact album they wanted to make, not least because they weren’t on anybody else’s timeline. As a result, it afforded them much more creative freedom while also allowing them to build on the sounds and textures they had begun exploring on that standalone track.

“Our mantra for this record was to not overthink anything,” explains Weinberger. “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.”

That headspace isn’t far removed from the usual place that Gatherers songs take the listener – a dark, bleak world that feels like it’s on the verge of a permanent night, that’s watching the sun set one final time with the knowledge it’s never going to rise again. While that certainly serves as an appropriate soundtrack for the dystopian world and times that we seem to currently be living in, the lyrics are actually more contemplative.

Written between April 2019 and March 2020, the band – completed by guitarists Anthony Gesa and Rob Talalai, new bassist Siddhu Anandalingam and drummer Adam Cichocki – also wrote in a way that accommodated Weinberger’s voice more than they had before on previous records.

The result is less a collection of conventional songs than of dark clouds of feeling and atmosphere – a set of bruised, desperate, searching songs that Weinberger refers to as “a panic attack in slow motion.”

It’s proof that, while Gatherers may have moved away from the more traditional post-hardcore template of their earlier records, the swathes and swirls and layers of sound present on these songs are just as powerful. It’s also the sound of a band who are fully in tune with one another. It helped, too, that the record – which was entirely self-produced – was recorded at New Jersey’s Timber Studios, which just so happens to be owned by Adam Cichocki. It meant the band, who have found a home for this album at No Sleep Records, was able to hone their sound precisely and get it to be exactly what they wanted.

Gatherers will return with their fourth full-length album later this year. Until then, fans can listen to “Ad Nauseam, I Drown,” as well as pre-order the accompanying 7” lathe square at www.gatherersband.com.