The Gathering is the eighth album by American thrash metal band Testament. Stylistically, this is much faster, heavier, and more thrash metal-based than the previous album Demonic. The over-all sound and general lyrical tone is darker and more evil in scope than previous Testament albums. Chuck Billy uses some of his most aggressive vocal approaches and multiple songs contains sections of death grunts. He also stated the speed of the songs was also influenced by Eric Peterson's playing in his black metal side project, Dragonlord, which is why this album is more up tempo than the previous album.