Decibel magazine recently conducted an interview with vocalist Silje Wergeland of Dutch/Norwegian rockers THE GATHERING. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Decibel: How will "Disclosure" differ from "The West Pole"?

Silje Wergeland: It's fresher, braver, more confident and honest, deeper, newer.

Decibel: You released "Heroes For Ghosts" as a single a long while ago. Was it released to keep interest up? Usually, singles are album-lead material, but this time you pushed it out way early. Sort of unorthodox.

Silje Wergeland: Yes, you are right. We decided to not do it for any other reason than release it because we wanted to! The song is way too long for a "normal" single, but that didn't matter. We never released it to try to get it on radio or on TV. We know their limits of about three minutes to get airplay, and knew we'll never get there anyways. It was only marketed through our Facebook, Twitter and webpage, so very low key. THE GATHERING has its own label [Psychonaut], but we are not very business-focused. It is still all about the music and art. We were just so happy with it and wanted to share it with the world.

Decibel: What if anything particular inspires THE GATHERING at this point? You're on your 10th album now, so I'm wondering if it's more comfort that keeps the engine running or is the creative vision still strong?

Silje Wergeland: I can assure you that the creative vision is still the strongest part. We work really hard to reinvent ourselves all the time and not repeat "the old days." I think you can see it quite clearly on most of our older work that we are not a band that uses the same recipe on every new release. We always pay attention to "what's new" in the musical soundscape and try to make something we haven't done before. I think that inspires us the most.

Read the entire interview from Decibel.