Cathedral
The VIIth Coming

I notice a gap in the multitude of reviews dedicated to this powerful doom band on this site, and I gladly fill it. The seventh album (year 2002) of this now-defunct quartet from the melancholy yet charming British Midlands is the only one I own… I make amends and will try to replenish my collection as soon as possible.

This allows me to be "fresh," almost innocent in my feelings and judgments about this album. In the sense that I am not currently able to assess whether "The VII Coming" is among their best works, perhaps their masterpiece, or conversely, even the least successful. In the first case, Cathedral would remain, in my experience, an interesting heavy metal page full of merits and limitations; in the second case, a remarkable group! The truth, and time will tell me this, probably lies somewhere in between.

Any rock music lover not limited by obtuse blinkers towards the so-called "racket" or the inevitable "gaudy" generated by heavy metal music cannot help but pay attention to Lee Dorrian's oblique, sepulchral, destabilizing voice, the frontman of Cathedral and a successful variant of Ozzy Osborne; but more versatile, disciplined, and talented.

Not always, since this album is inconsistent in the quality of its music, but listening to it with eyes closed and headphones to avoid alarming the family, at certain moments I was mentally transported into one of those British countryside cemeteries, full of Celtic crosses half-tilted emerging from the wild ground. I happened to enter one of them, quite scrappy, at dusk, and the experience turned out to be indelible… there was an incredible aura, the energy of places of death seasoned with the unique suggestion that Northern European folklore on the afterlife knows how to convey.

The album begins so-so: in the opening "Phoenix Rising" (to which the cover refers) they go heavy on the metal without much substance; Dorian's disturbing phrases are lacking in melody and inventiveness. The next "Resisting the Ghost" is moreover a punk metal with all the characteristics of the genre: short, wooden, forgettable.

However, things take off brilliantly with the third and fourth tracks, the best on the list: first comes "Skullflower" which bursts in with a combine-harvester bass digging out a riff with the typical extreme string-bending grind, soon supported by two beautiful guitars that, somewhat in unison, somewhat in harmony, play the same card. The best, however, comes in the instrumental central portion: the rhythm slows down to pure doom, the poor strings of the instruments are shredded by bloody pullings, the drummer delivers adequate, professional punches to the cymbals and kicks to the bass drum, the cones of the amplifiers vibrate with murderous low frequencies, capable of snapping the screws that hold them together to the frame and making them end up in the guitarist's hand, or even into my brain.

The following "Aphrodite’s Winter" is even more: an initial acoustic guitar arpeggio that couldn’t be more sepulchral, Dorrian's declamation seasoned with half growls but essentially "orthodox," a magnificent tone. Even in the instrumental section, the pace of the electric funeral doesn’t break, with the sick organ (played by someone outside the group) lifting the claustrophobic atmosphere.

With "The Empty Mirror" there’s a return to a less suffocating and relevant repertoire, with a generic and not very memorable riff and rhythm. After the third minute, however, everything changes; the track first calms in an atmospheric interlude with recited voice, then the instrumental doom thrashes begin, in slow and "free" time, resolved by a chant for organ and mellotron, a shame too short as it's almost immediately cut by the return of the big guitar riff. In total almost nine minutes: it's the central track of the album, in every sense.

In "Nocturnal Fist" the youthful punk experiences of these musicians resurface: three minutes of unprecedented "wood" with Brian Dixon engaged in frantically (fist, indeed) pounding away at skins and cymbals. "Iconoclast" which follows doesn’t tell me anything, its two or three parts follow one another without impact, the subsequent "Black Robed Avenger" is better with its bridge decorated with cemetery Hammond to break the sequences in the guitarist’s Toni Iommi style, somewhat clichéd. There’s also a wind effect, and the arpeggiated finale in a'la "War Pigs."

Of the two final tracks, "Congregation of Sorcerer’s" is the most extreme of all, the voice doesn’t leave the (melodic) growl and the riffs are always only claustrophobic and insistent. The grand finale "Halo of Fire" initially is a long agony of sick invocations on the obtuse arpeggiation of the organ, then the timely tempo change/atmospheric lift arrives, this time piloted by the bass, but nothing epochal really.

Every now and then you need it, damn it! (I mean listening to stuff like this, until your ears bleed a little). The usual three and a half stars rounded up.