Cathedral
The Carnival Bizarre

THE REVIEW

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.