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Rating: 1995, a crucial year for English metal. Particularly, the doom scene was reaching significant peaks: Anathema was attaining full artistic maturity (The Silent Enigma), Paradise Lost courageously shed the death reminiscences from their sound (the refined Draconian Times), and the sorrowful My Dying Bride were at the height of their fame.
In the same scene, different from the others, Cathedral crafted a raw diamond: The Carnival Bizarre is still one of their pinnacles, a decayed chest of sounds intensely pure in their bastard blend. Shunning gothic, decadent, romantic embellishments, the group gathers a mutated fruit of pure rock from the bare earth, in the original conception of the term; a colossal, dense but catchy music, scandalously indebted to those who had taken and reshaped "heavy music" twenty years before.
The omnipresent Black Sabbath are plundered in form and content, minutes flow with creativity and imagination, presenting ultra-compact hard rock riffs and doom-death slowdowns, imaginative lyrics of witches and magic, declaimed by a raspy, boozy voice. And more: cymbals, mellotron, and percussion that seem to originate from depths. A grotesque festival of ghosts and goblins, typically Anglo-Saxon fantastic suggestions spewed out by frontman Dorrian, a pure metaller discovering flower power.
Gaz Jennings is a noisy guitarist and a talented composer, and in the powerful "Utopian Blaster", he is accompanied by idol-mentor Tony Iommi. There's room for the gloomy "Night Of The Seagulls", doom to the core, for the festive title track, and for the splendid opener "Vampire Sun". In conclusion, an orgasmic instrumental explosion with "Electric Grave". An album decidedly rich, with psychedelic suggestions, homogeneous and without drops in tone.
They will remain underrated by many, also for their staying away from the increasingly solidified canons of pseudo-lyrical female vocals, orchestra (sampled and not), and various amenities that have hit and sunk the old doom in the new millennium: a clear example of how one can craft music that is simultaneously dark and sunny, free.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Vampire Sun (04:06)
Skull of god with the devils eyes
Crowned in fire sodden sky
Beaming rays of genocide
Into virtues magic lie
Illusive myth of light enslaves you
Vampire sun it drains you
Beg the sword for liberty
Fall before the king of flies
Delirium is flowing free
In our obedience disease
The gift of life is reaped of value
Vampire sun it drains you
Gaze into the face of fire
Dreams descend into the pyre
Monolithic angel
Unveil your king to this planet disabled
Mummify the cosmos
With the vision of divinity yeah!
Electric vulture flying high
Through the universal eye
To cleanse the heavens with earth soul
The excretion of mankind
Feeding from the fangs of virtue
Vampire sun it drains you
Gaze into the face of fire
Dreams descent into the pyre
02 Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) (05:19)
She rides to the sabbath
Veiled under silver light
To make love to the devil
necromancer of nyte (a vampire child at night)
Within the mystic forest
She sets your world alight
Her covern conjure the demons
Herald the sacrifice yeah
Lucifera Vampirella
She bares the mark of the devil
Queen of the witches
Her kingdom is your hell
black masses in the convent
Priests under her spell
The crops have withered
The sky bends upside down
Her name is lucifera
The mutant preachers yell - yeah
My name is hopkins
I'm the witchfinder general
My impotence deceives me
Your beauty turns me pale
Winds haunt the village
Satans ghost awakes
The world falls into darkness
As she melts at the stake - yeah
My name is hopkins witchfinder general
Your soul condemned to hell
03 Utopian Blaster (05:41)
Today the sun refused to shine
On this war infested land
Beyond our sky, the lord of life
Sending crossbones tumbling down
Citadel on a traveling stone
Magic wisdom our only home
As flesh impostors fight the master
Of forces to them unknown yeah!
Blinded by the power
Life spell castor
Utopian blaster
Peace your master
Sculptured space in plastic hands
Evil empire of mankind
Blazing light from the sword of mars
Shall destroy this utopian farce
Giant mass of the children high
Sleeping on beds of air
Limitations we've unbound
Come and join us well take you there - yeah
Struck ever after
Lifespell castor
Utopian blaster
Peace your master now!
Legend of Earth after
Sleep in dusted grace
Time has ceased our fortune shall begin
Bathe in fountains of laughter
Cleansed by endtime rapture
Embrace the final dawn
Fatal glow - sirens in the wind
Conquest oh we shall capture yeah!
We race upon the unicorn
To a land of towers green
While soldiers march into the void
Guided by mans funeral hand
Golden souls riding on the wind
From the path of nature sinned
Cosmic army military
Our weapons be only love - yeah
Struck by the power
Lifespell castor
Utopian blaster
Face your master now
04 Night of the Seagulls (07:01)
We are the blind dead
No eyes inside our head
Our senses lead us to your nightmare
Centuries of death we wear
Pharaoh's cross in dust we bare
Immortal horses slowly ride us to you
Through the black mist
They ride
Knights templar - arise
The shores unearthly dead
Mournful mothers chilled with dread
Leave their offspring to knights templar
They rise from the sea
At midnight the prize you see
Tied to the post - a virgin screaming
Through the black mist
They ride
Knights templar - arise - oh!!!
Into our castle led
Seagulls howling overhead
The ritual you face
You shall no after
Your blood we drink for eternity
Flesh unto the crabs we leave
And feed your heart unto Aquarian master
Through the black mist
They ride
Knights templar - arise
08 Blue Light (03:27)
Waning autumn, winter blue
Tonight we dance in praise of you
Oh reaper scream a silent serenade
Of tunes above earths grave
Enigma bites our world in grey
To kill the morning jester fade
Our host of nocturn is the ghost of day
The cosmos for you paved
The milky way pours over me
We own the stars and night
Angel of death has set us free
Blue light of pure insight
Planetary suicide
From violence of red sun we hide
Long live disciples of eternal night
In praise of moonlit sky
The milky way pours over me
At one with stars and night
Angel of death has set us free
Blue light of pure insight
Take his hand
To the land of dreams
Fear not his purple might
Truths unfold
With the grace of death
Iron lace ties our embrace
09 Palace of Fallen Majesty (07:44)
We are guided by the moon
Into our palace tomb
Shrine of dead king Midas
Whose gold turned into stone
Children of the grave
Entombed in a faceless day
Are we the ones insane
To carry a spirit flame
Skeleton of centuries
Oh solemn majesty
You'll stand again
Unveil the key
Grant life to we
On this violet night
We await your sight
As the splendour falls
Upon these naked walls
In the haunted garden
A velvet raven calls
Temples born of ice
Release a solemn chime
Into twilight thunder
Within the sands of time
Skeleton of centuries
Eternal mysteries
Released from pain
Again we die
To breathe in vain
Seared wealth of truth
By your touch restored
Summer seized in the grip of twilight fair
As we conceive to retrieve our rightful fortune
Mourn not we, in lost shapes of time reborn
To bathe in seas of you - oh blackest dawn
We find salvation in a palace of dead kings
Hold a knife to the dawn - climb into the dream
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