Makin Waves Record of the Week: Gatherers' "We Are Alive Beyond Repair"

Bayonne-based Gatherers have released “We Are Alive Beyond Repair,” their second LP for Equal Vision Records and fourth studio release overall since 2012. In support of the new album, Gatherers have embarked on a national tour that brings them June 6 to The Saint in Asbury Park. Photo by Kelsey Hunter Ayres

If you took The Cure and Radiohead, stabbed in them in the hearts and guts, sprayed their blood and entrails all over the floor and let their fans wrestle in them, Gatherers would make the perfect soundtrack. Too intense? Well, Gatherers are a brutally intense, beautifully morbid band.

On “We Are Alive Beyond Repair,” their fourth studio collection, third LP and second full-length for hard-core legend Ray Cappo’s Equal Vision label following 2015’s “Quiet World,” the Bayonne-based five-piece are super tight and technically superb. This especially true of bassist Matt Popowski, whose fat fluidness adds greatly to many of the 11 tracks. I also love the way guitarists Rob Talalai and Anthony Gesa battle each other, like two opposing war planes crashing into the sea at the same time, while drummer Adam Cichocki holds their creative chaos together with the precision of a machine and the soul of Babatunde Olatunji.

But at the front and center of Gatherers is vocalist, lyricist and synth player/sequencer Rich Weinberger. He matches the band’s range from melodic to pummeling with equally varied and dynamic vocals, dark to light keyboard patches, and eerie, gloomy insights that recall the inventive minds and tortured souls of Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Wolf and Sylvia Plath.

Like Toothgrinder vocalist Justin Matthews, Weinberger has this incredible ability to go from high-pitched sweetness to low guttural growl. The best example is “Ann Liv Young” in which he goes back and forth in those vocal styles within seemingly impossible seconds of each other. Yet, he also can pull it off live.

“Lambs to the Chapel” also mixes it up, going from a frightening, blood-curdling final verse into a hauntingly acoustic conclusion. Other standout tracks include the closing “Starve,” which features a beautifully expressive ending that sounds as if Weinberger is pleading with someone who is holding a gun to his head.

The single, “The Floorboards Ate Breathing,” mixes the synth-driven, guitar-echoing alt-dance vibe of mid- to late-80s The Cure with Edgar Allan Poe’s sense of the macabre. The gruesome, eerie tune was inspired by a 2007 HBO documentary about a wife, who after years of domestic abuse against her and her son, snapped and killed her husband with a hammer.

The equally emotional “Every Pain In Monochrome” draws its sad, violent story from British author Virginia Woolfe, who took her life by filling her pockets with stones and walking into a river. Similarly, for the eternally morose “Infinity & Gloom,” Weinberger draws his inspiration from and pays tribute to sad lass Sylvia Plath, an influential mid-20th century poet.

Great as this record is, Gatherers are even better live, especially Weinberger use of sequencers. A two-month national tour kicks off May 31 at Riverwalk in New Hampshire. Northeast dates include June 2, Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass.; June 3, Fete Music Hall, Providence, R.I.; June 4, Café Nine, New Haven, Conn.; June 6, The Saint, Asbury Park; June 7, Mercury Lounge, New York City; June 8, Boot & Saddle, Philadelphia; June 9, Metro Gallery, Baltimore; July 18, Mohawk Place, Buffalo, N.Y.; July 19, The Sinclair, Cambridge, Mass., and July 21, Amityville Music Hall, Amityville, N.Y.

Bob Makin is the reporter for www.MyCentralJersey.com/entertainment and a former managing editor of The Aquarian Weekly, which launched this column in 1988. Contact him at makinwaves64@yahoo.com. And like Makin Waves at www.facebook.com/makinwavescolumn.