Cathedral - The Garden Of Unearthly Delights

As far as doom metal goes, Cathedral have always been one of my favourites. They were the band that introduced me to the genre in my youth, and therefore have always occupied a soft-spot in my blackened heart. Heading up to London Forum to catch the band's final show was something that will stick with me forever. The disbanded warriors of gloom have a varied and interesting back catalogue ranging from the downright heavy to the downright weird, and The Garden Of Unearthly Delights is about somewhere in the middle of that scale.

Endtyme and The VIIth Coming saw Cathedral's 90s experimental sound stripped right back to the brutal bare bones. Having once against mastered the medium of heavy in lieu of psych, The Garden Of Unearthly Delights sees the band beginning to re-approach their psychedelic tendencies through a far more clarified, less self-indulgent path. Stadium-fillers such as "The North Berwick Witch Trials" and "Corpsecycle" stand in stark comparison to the epic "Oro The Manslayer" or the 27-minute, obscenely progressive lurcher "The Garden".  

The stunning cover painting was provided, as almost always, by the incredible Dave Patchett. The classical chaos of Cathedral album sleeves always makes for an interesting staring match as their twisted doom unfolds. Man, I miss this band.

With The Dead - With The Dead

Fuuuuck me this shit is so heavy, I just had to get my oar in just incase the Doomfinder General shits out a review for this before me! I don't write about that much doom metal these days so I'll take this fairly rare opportunity to plug a new supergroup of slow. With The Dead features the original Electric Wizard backbone dynamic duo (later to perform as Ramesses) joined with ex-Cathedral/Napalm Death crooner and Rise Above Records CEO Lee Dorrian. Now how's that for a good fucking idea?

The result, perhaps expectedly, is somewhere between Dopethrone and Endtyme; a bludgeoning affair of smoggy doom riffery and organ-pulping bass tone. For every stoned wondering of what classic Wizard would have sounded like with Dorrian on vocals, there is now an answer, and that answer will bury you into the fucking ground. There's a bit of classic, trad-doom riffing on "Nephthys" and the odd solo but for the most part this is pure worship to the Wizard sound of old, topped with that magical Cathedral feel. It might seem obvious basing this review around pointing that out, but it's literally perfect. Have a goose. 

Cathedral - Endtyme

For me, Endtyme stands apart from anything else in the Cathedral discography. They have done dark before, sure, one needs not look further than the debut album to realize that, but that record is a whole other sack of decapitated witch heads. Here, Cathedral are chuggy and enormously groovy-heavy; and in a certain way take their groovy doom and smash it head on with the styles on display in the debut. Once I read somewhere  a quote that more-or-less said "Endtyme proves that Cathedral can still bang heads", and that pretty much sums it up.

 

"Melancholy Emperor" remained a Cathedral staple and ended up even on the Earache best of called The Serpent's Gold, "Whores to Oblivion" is catchy as shit, even featuring something that comes close to harsh noise at the end! Talk about variety! "Alcemist of Sorrow" is one of my favourite Cathedral songs, the opening lines of "I am Midas in reverse, my gold has turned to lead" are possibly the best example of Lee Dorrian's vocals ever (it's either that or "Huggy Bear? Oh yeah!"). Released a fuckload of time ago on Earache Records and strangely, this pressing was confined only to CD, which is very unusual for a band like Cathedral.

PS apologies for the frankly vomit-inducing scans; the Endtyme artwork is an absolute bitch to try and get a picture of because it's all so fucking shiny.