Cathedral
The Last Spire

In memoriam: Cathedral 1990-2013

Clad in macabre eloquence, "The Last Spire" is the title of the last work by Cathedral, released posthumously, yet announced, after the disbandment (irrevocable, it seems) about a year and a half ago, symbolically marked by the concert held on December 3, 2011, at the Kentish Town Forum, London, alongside Grand Magus, Comus, and Gentlemen's Pistols.

There is no better requiem than silence, but as our Masters already taught us in the days of the immense historic first album, that "Forest of Equilibrium" still today considered one of the heaviest deliveries of modern music, the right way to leave is commiserating the celebration.

The best way to leave was this "The Last Spire," with which Lee Dorrian's long-lived creature closes the circle to return to the sounds that were in the beginning, sounds already partially abandoned starting with the second resplendent album "The Ethereal Mirror." Moreover, if Dorrian, upon leaving Napalm Death, founded Cathedral to celebrate his love for historic doom-metal bands, Candlemass, Pentagram, and Saint Vitus even before Black Sabbath themselves (still essential, no ifs, ands, or buts!), it is fitting that he ends his creation with the same intentions.

"The Last Spire" could therefore be the second album by Cathedral, who today seem to no longer want to joke, evolve, and experiment, as if they wanted to focus on purposes lost over time. The path of passing resembles terribly the way from the womb to the hated light: their music returns to being overpoweringly heavy, monolithic, suffocating, oppressive, monumental, pachydermic. In two words: f***ing DOOM. Honor, therefore, to those who choose to step aside before the inevitable decline.

If Cathedral's career has been essentially a rigorous variation on the same theme, a glance at their discography helps us understand that in truth, their journey has been mutable and full of continuous backward and forward leaps within the same cauldron of inspirations. And for this, the tenth full-length by Dorrian and company, despite the clear statement of intents, could not completely ignore the path taken in over twenty years of career: although in meager doses compared to the recent past, we therefore find flashes of prog, of psychedelia, of all those ingredients that characterized one of the most exhilarating experiences of the post-Sabbath rock and metal era. Not much, in truth, perhaps only the second portion of "An Observation" manages in its aimless tail to condense a good quantity of ideas and all the love and admiration that Our Masters have always had for the dense and occult underbrush of dark progressive and psychedelic bands that "shone" in a very short season between the sixties and seventies. But apart from this episode, and some scattered flashes along the platter's duration (a beautiful brick of almost sixty minutes), the hand returns heavy, the prog parts sluggish, all variations functional to a funereal ritual that intends to celebrate the end of the band. "The Last Spire" is ultimately the most clear reaffirmation of identity that Cathedral have manifested during their career: it's understandable that this process of self-reworking occurs in all its splendor an instant before the fatal extinction of the last flicker of affirmation.

Even the gray "Endtyme," which was also a sharp turn towards the most remote past, does not seem to hold up in comparison. "The Last Spire" is another story: "The Last Spire" is beautiful, it is dense, sublime, overflowing with doom in every note or sound, from its dark inception, from the sinister croaking of crows, from the whistling wind, from the tolling of the death bell, from the threats of the possessed preacher, from the remnants of feedback heralding the atmospheric introduction "Entrance to Hell." It’s a boulder, "The Last Spire," in substance and form, starting from the thick and heavy sounds, a sonic dimension where every note weighs tons, moves by inertia, suggests exhaustion. A sound both derelict and vibrant at the same time, rediscovering the ferocity (even at the level of stylistic solutions) of true underground music, as it happened when our Masters shared the stage with Carcass, Entombed, and Confessor during the historic '92 "Gods of Grind" tour (and it's no surprise that Chris Reifert, emblem of the old school, lends his rancid vocals in "Cathedral of the Damned").

...Music to my ears...and while it is surely with great sadness that we bid farewell to Cathedral forever, it is at the same time an infinite joy to see them leave in this way. No regrets and no bitter aftertaste: death dies and her funeral is a party. A party for our ears, a party for the passionate fans of the English combo, a party for all fans of the heaviest doom-metal imaginable. Every player embraces the assigned role in the most fitting way: Garry Jennings does it in his manner, uprooting from his guitar with disarming ease a collection of riffs that for number and quality would pale any of his colleagues dedicated to the same search; the mighty Brian Dixon behind the skins sacrifices that dynamism which was his main contribution since his entry in the band during "The Carnival Bizarre" and indulges with complacent sadness in slow and hypnotic rhythms; the new addition Scott Carlson does not make us miss the likable Leo Smee, thickening the sound with rich brushstrokes of beautifully laden bass; and then there's Lee Dorrian, worn voice, decrepit voice, beautiful voice, plunged once more into the coils of a chant that carries within it the taste of eternal affliction. All of this seasoned by the vintage sounds of the Hammond organ, mellotron, moog, and synths of the talented David Moore, hired as a session: few Pindaric flights should we expect from his keys, only pours of purplish paint over the cracked walls of the black Cathedral. Dave Patchett's fans, author of most of the band's beautiful album covers, can also be at peace: behind a minimal and rather anonymous cover hides, for those who purchase the original album, a giant poster depicting the colorful funeral of Cathedral in the now peculiar style of the artist, which certainly pays a handsome tribute to the unmistakable flair of Jeronimous Bosch.

Not everything is perfect, for instance, in the almost twelve minutes of the opener "Pallbearer," between sepulchral slowness and sudden restarts, our Masters seem to lose their compass more than once: in the reckless succession of images and settings, we find a certain indulgence to throw down, one last time, everything that could cross their mind, and for this "The Last Spire" cannot be defined a perfect record, as it is a container of the waste that needed to be expelled before the final farewell. But paradoxically, in this carelessness lies the beauty of the album that regains a spontaneity partly lost along the way by the band.

A work that nonetheless manages to string together, in a context of pataphysical dispersion, organic moments imbued with a certain rigor, like the irresistible "Cathedral of the Damned," shaken by powerful mid-tempos and killer riffs (the only fast-paced episode of the album) or the absolute masterpiece "Tower of Silence," and also the first single, with a gaudy music video circulating online. It is the doom-song par excellence, performed by the doom-band par excellence, difficult to find elsewhere such perfection on the matter. Slightly inferior are the subsequent episodes, all devoted to the band's self-celebration. But if auto-citation is permissible to discuss, this should not discourage the purchase of the album, because even where the rigor falters in the face of the regurgitation of perhaps misplaced but evidently indomitable progressive tendencies ("Infestation of Grey Death," the already mentioned "An Observation") or even when self-referentiality becomes a spoof (the interlude "The Last Laugh," nothing but a mocking laugh repeated for a few seconds), the qualitative level of the pieces remains sky-high. And if in operations like these it becomes truly challenging to separate analysis from unconditional affection, and certainly it will appear impossible to draw a boundary between the quality in the absolute sense of the work and fondness towards the brand it carries (and even more so at the moment of farewell – you know, with the dead it is permissible to be more indulgent), satisfaction in listening remains the only constant of this last chapter of the mighty Cathedral saga.

Yes, "The Last Spire" is a satisfying album, certainly at the opposite end of any possibility of disappointment. Proof of this, once again, is the conclusive, ultra-celebratory "This Body, Thy Tomb," which despite its predictability, has the merit of truly taking us back to the debut times (awakening in us sensations we thought buried forever), and then abandoning itself in the finale, after a short acoustic break, in a final ride based on creaking Hammond and bone-crushing riffs: the last notes that Cathedral, barring second thoughts (but it seems Dorrian doesn’t really want to anymore – but never say never, as the saying goes), deposit on this senseless world.

Amen.