Cathedral
The Guessing Game

Mammoth, no other word could more appropriately describe "The Guessing Game" by the freak-doomsters Cathedral. Full, complete, ambitious, heavy, difficult.

To celebrate their twenty years of doom&love in 2010, the English decided to remove any barriers to their visionary creativity and forged a long album brimming with heterogeneous influences. Doom-stoner in "Painting In The Dark" with its granite riffs, melancholic in the splendid "Death Of An Anarchist."

There is room for elements taken from metal to space rock, passing through Anglo-Saxon folk. Without leaving anything to chance, the band offers small anarchic masterpieces like the jazzy "Cats, Incense, Candels & Wine" and "Funeral Of Dreams," where 1967-made psychedelia hovers with its lysergic blasts.

An LP scattered with details and curiosities, from falsetto choirs to established mellotron bases, up to the ironic "Edwige's Eyes," dedicated to the legendary Edwige Fenech, heroine of Italian B-movies. Surprisingly, despite the considerable length (about 90 minutes, 2 discs) and the rougher and more doom pieces ("Requiem For The Voiceless"), the music contained here flows fluidly and homogeneously despite its extreme variety.

Cathedral reconfirm themselves as one of the most intelligent and courageous remnants of the "old" metal: just as Forest Of Equilibrium was fundamental in the scene, this work is the summary of two decades of continuous musical evolution, always consistent with the term "rock," without descending into alluring trivialities or, conversely, ridiculous stances of true-metallers at all costs. Positive note, now predictably, for the cover, once again the result of a painting specially created for the occasion.

5 stars for the courage, the quality, the importance of writing works like this after such a long-lasting career.