More than a year after Everything Is Changing (2012), Anneke van Giersbergen appears with Drive. The quick successor exposes the two most important musical preferences of the Brabant. On the one hand there are solid rock tracks like We Live On and Mental Jungle that are reminiscent of her time with The Gathering, on the other hand Van Giersbergen also seems unable to resist the temptation of pop
… music. For example, the catchy title track, as well as the radio-friendly You Will Never Change, would have fallen out of place on her previous work. That change makes Drive more accessible to a wider audience. Van Giersbergen mainly wanted to make music in the old-fashioned way with Drive: 'Just dive into the studio with a group of musicians and make something beautiful, instead of exchanging files via the internet'. It is a fact that there is a nice end product, but whether her loyal hard rock fans will appreciate the increasingly flashy flirtation with pop music is still the question. (BvdV)more