After the 13 years with THE GATHERING sweet Anneke van Giersbergen decided to leave the band because as she stated: Things had changed in my personal and musical life. I found this to be an honest decision and after all, it would be best for the band to move on with the rest of the members without having second thoughts about it.
After a while Anneke announced the formation of new band AQUA DE ANNIQUE with whom she'd release  the music she had written all these years with THE GATHERING. From the first samples it became clear to me that Anneke decided to drift away from the Metal genre and do something I'd prefer to label as soft Rock instead of pop that sounds almost abusive!
I think that most of you are thinking of skipping the rest of this review for something more interesting and possibly more Metal. Well, stick around a little more because this album is not so bad! I mean songs like Beautiful One and the faster Witness bear the THE GATHERING atmosphere with of course Anneke's excellent voice. I really loved the depressive atmosphere that is spread all around and gets enhanced by some electronic sounds and low tuned clean guitars. Even though, Air will make rare appearances in my CD player I am really glad that Anneke is still around with her beautiful vocals. In the dark (should I say pink) side of this album are the poppy My Girl, Trail Of Grief or the cheesy ballad Come Wander With Me. Sadly at least, the distortion in the guitars makes one and only appearance in the pretty good and almost fast You Are Nice.
You won't find a grading here since this album can not be considered as Metal; the review was done to present the solo work of Anneke who decided to move away from the left hand path.