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Whispering Gallery - Biography


This band's profile is 'invisible', meaning that it's much less prominent on the site - either because it's incomplete, or maybe doesn't entirely fit MS format.


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1995-2005

Biography

Whispering gallery is a metal band from the Netherlands formed at the end of 1995. After some line-up changes they recorded their debut demo "Gallery of Dreams" in june 1997 at Harrow Productions with producer Harry Weijering and released it a few months later. With two clean male vocals and an impressive grunter, they combined melody and agression with pure doom-metal art.

With some good reviews (Aardschok, Mindview) and live shows (good responses) Killerwhale Records became interested in whispering gallery. With this in mind they started writing new songs with more diversity in vocal styles, for example polyphonic parts and black screams. With the new synthesizer player, this instrument became more than just a background instrument. This brought more balance between agression and melody without loosing the doom-metal sound.

In june 1998 they went back to Harrow Productions to record the mini-CD "Poems of a Forgotten Dream" It became an album with more diversity in the songs. This recording brought them a contract with Killerwhale Records for the release of that mini-CD and a forthcoming full-length CD. The contract was signed in February 1999 and the mini-CD was released in april of that same year.

In the mean time they delivered two remixed songs from the "Gallery of Dreams" demo for the compilation-CD "Crushed Skull Volume I" released in January 1999 by Skull Crusher Records. The reactions and reviews of the mini-CD aswell as the compilation-CD in the metalzines were very positive and a lot of live shows were given. With the full-length-CD scheduled for the Autumn of 1999 they started to write new songs (although a few songs were already written in 1998 after the recording of the mini-CD).

In August 1999 they went to Harrow Productions again, and recorded the full-length-CD "Like a Dream of Never-ending Beauty Love never dies..." with producers Harry Weijering and Erik de Boer.

With former bass-player Hubert ter Meulen on guitars and former guitar player Barry van Trigt now playing bass the songs became technically more structured with more twin lead and guitar solos. The songwriting and production are superior to the previous recordings. As before the CD contains heavy doommetal varied with melodic polyphonic parts, piano and acoustic guitars. The CD was mixed in October 1999 and the release was sceduled for december but had some delay. Finally at the end of march the "GO" came from Killerwhale Records and the CD was released on the 7th of April. A year later Killerwhale Records stopped due to financial problems.

Whispering gallery can also be heard on the compilation-CD "Icons" (the best of Killerwhale and Polar Bear Records) with one song of the mini-CD, and on the the compilation-CD from Ancient Ceremonies issue 6 2000, with a song of the full-lenght-CD.

In the Autumn of 2000 more live shows were given and they were very pleased to do some gigs with Within Temptation.In that period, drummer Pascal Spierings left the band and Jurriaan Verhaar replaced him. In the beginning of 2001 they became the special guests on the entire tour of W.T. and they got a lot of good responses during that tour. Between the tour they also did some headline shows and they wrote new songs. It was a very exciting time for the band. In June 2001 Jurriaan Verhaar left the band and became our sound technician again.

After the summer they wrote enough songs for a new full-length album so they decided to book the Harrow Studio again. Former drummer Pascal rejoined the band and under the title "Lost as One" they recorded 9 songs.
The songs became catchier, have more melody but remain heavy doom as ever!

Whispering Gallery released the album in Holland by themselves.
'Lost as One' can be purchased at live concerts and on-line on this site. The album will be released by Funeral Harvest Records in Los Angeles. The cd can also be ordered Large Merchandise...