Rating: 9.8

Country: United Kingdom

Release Date: 2005

Track list:
1. Dearth AD 2005
2. Tree Of Life & Death
3. North Berwick Witch Trials
4. Upon Azrael’s Wings
5. Corpsecycle
6. Fields Of Zagara
7. Oro The Manslayer
8. Beneath A Funeral Sun
9. The Garden
10. Proga - Europa

Band Website: Cathedral

Cathedral - The Garden of Unearthly Delights

Lee Dorrian- Vocals, Samples
Gaz Jennings- Guitars
Leo Smee- Bass
Brian Dixon- Drums

Of all the bands that populate an increasingly fashionable doom landscape, few are more maligned, and conversely, adored than Coventry's Cathedral. Such is the polarizing effect that Cathedral has exerted since their genesis in 1990- one either reveres or reviles them, and there are few that inhabit an ambivalent grey area regarding Lee Dorrian's vocal theatrics, or, indeed, the spectacularly unfair, yet widely-advocated perspective that Cathedral have been putting out the same album since career landmark 'The Carnival Bizarre'. Of course, seasoned Cathedral listeners can discern that there are clear, even gaping, differences that separate each majestic monolith in their uniformly excellent discography. Dabbling in everything from Funkadelic-ized whiteboy funk (“Midnight Mountain”) to tongue-in-cheek Witchfinder General irony, Cathedral have been authors of some of this reviewer's favorite post-‘70s doom rock moments. Unquestionably one of the most distinctive and adventurous troupes in a terrain littered with two-bit Vitus knockoffs, bland Sabbath revisionists and interminably redundant funeral doom nonsense, Cathedral's new record is, predictably, heads and shoulders above much of the sterile competition, a writhing, serpentine, venomous beast that affirms their place among the grand magi of riff-driven bludgeon.

Admittedly, I could have done without the utterly expendable ambient noise introduction of "Dearth AD 2005", but all is forgiven once the feedback collapses into the droning, absolutely PUTRID bass sound that opens “Tree Of Life And Death”. Enter propulsive “Ride”-like rhythm and riff, commence HEADBANGING! Cue Lee Dorrian's Tom G. Warrior meets Cronos meets Kurt Brecht meets absolute loony vocalizations, continue HEADBANGING! Brief respite 2 minutes through, gather your breath for what is, inevitably, impending. Three minutes through, and the band tease the listener with a psychedelic, vintage Sabbath bridge, complete with sufficient Ozzy-isms. 03:22, PULSING, THROBBING, SINEWY, SKULLSTOMPING TRAMPLE! That kick drum, THUNDEROUS, STAMPEDING, like baseball bats to the fucking forehead, that guitar sound, slurred, sludgy, asphyxiatingly thick, and that BASS SOUND, a COILING, OMINOUS, SONOROUS THUMP, bubbling and seeping menacingly beneath the mix, providing a nefarious, seismic premise for the torrential surge that is 'The Garden Of Unearthly Delights'. The mix is absolutely perfect, and the arrangement is immaculate on this track. Beautifully, heartrendingly brutal, with absolutely no fat or excess sugar.

“North Berwick Witch Trials”. HOLY HOPKINS, BRUCE WAYNE! Imagine 'Lucifuge' era Danzig or the Babylon Whores covering Cathedral's finest tune (in my earnest opinion, at the very least), and you'd have something remarkably similar to this molten slab of rocking excellence. I absolutely adore Leo Smee's bassline here, vacillating between providing a rock solid, driving foundation for Gaz's irresistible riffing/Brian's restrained, yet SWINGING, GROOVING rock rhythms and deviating from the proceedings to throw in a little run or fill. The song, meanwhile, belongs on the Cathedral All Time Mixtape ™, right next to Hopkins. Effectively, this is the rambunctious, ale-swilling, rabble-rousing yin to Hopkins' sinister, snarling yang, and while the bridge riff isn't QUITE as devastating as Hopkins' (and what is, really? One of the 5 best riffs EVER, I say), the effect is strikingly similar, in that it will arouse Neanderthal tendencies to dent your wall and cause considerable damage to surrounding furniture.

By the time “Upon Azrael's Wings” snowballs out of your speakers, said furniture will, I forecast, be quite irreparable indeed. The agenda here is total 'To Mega Therion' homage (down to the G Warrior adlibs, enunciation and chord progressions), undoubtedly the most teary-eyed black mass Dorrian and Jennings have convened in Mr Gabriel Fischer's honor. Mr Dorrian has long echoed his admiration for the first two Celtic Frost records, and while his vocal inflections have long amplified this, every now and then Cathedral feel a full-blown, wanton worship session is in order, and we are ALL the better for it. “Corpsecycle” takes a decidedly more stoner-rock (think Orange Goblin, though Cathedral obviously conceived of this blueprint LONG before “stoner rock” even became an en vogue idiom) bent, and is consequently slightly less engaging than the two BEHEMOTHS that preceded it, but trust Gaz Jennings to rescue a sagging song with a GREAT riff 4 minutes through, followed by a FANTASTIC, lurching breakdown accented by Brian's cowbell.

In an effort to conserve your, and indeed, my time, I cannot grant each and every track the GUSHING, superlative-laden blurb that it so justly deserves. Instead, here are my cursory, abbreviated remarks: “The Fields Of Zagara” is the requisite “Orchid”/”Laguna Sunrise” breather, fingerplucked, mournful acoustic lines supplemented with 'Hammerheart'-esque samples of clanging swords and approaching hordes in the distance. Perfect prelude, of course, to the storming, unrelentingly intense “Oro The Manslayer”, certainly the most uptempo barnstormer on the record. Quite akin to High On Fire and Lair Of The Minotaur in approach, actually, yet vehemently, assertively and defiantly Cathedral in execution, reminding one just how much Matt Pike's power trio owes to musical blueprints first formulated on 'The Ethereal Mirror'. “Beneath The Funeral Sun” is, to my mind, the least exhilarating cut on the record, but in comes Mr Jennings to warrant another tap of the repeat button 02:47 through with a MARVELLOUS Sabbathine groove.

Certainly, much of the critical ink that will be spilled in ode of 'The Garden Of Unearthly Delights' will be accorded to “The Garden”, unquestionably the band's most ambitious undertaking yet. Casting the listener first in a depthless chasm of flanging, encircling feedback, the track begins in earnest 01:32 through, and immediately psychedelic folk aficionados will recognize the EXTREME likeness to Mellow Candle, whose 'Swaddling Songs' record has remained dear to Mr Dorrian's heart throughout his recording career. There is the same sense of soporific ethereality, the wandering, supple, fluid basswork, the Clodagh Simmons/Allison Williams-esque celestial, freak-folkie female vocals. The arrangement and layering is far simpler than that of 'Swaddling Songs' (no string fills here, and the feel is a lot sparser, more spacious than Mellow Candle) or even Comus' 'First Utterance', but it is obvious what the band are striving to achieve here. 02:30 in, and we are greeted with THE finest riff on the record thus far (and that's saying a HELL of a lot!), a CRUEL, CARNIVOROUS, flesh-flaying barrage of cadavers that immediately swallows any reservations you have against banging your head, propelling you into a perilous vortex where whiplash is law.

This riff is repeated for the better part of the next 2 minutes, before the hack'n'bash secedes in lieu of an Arcadium-esque folk guitar line and a VERY cool phasing Lee/female vocal interplay that has all the Anglican drug-addled pastoral whimsy of Comus' “Drip Drip” and The Incredible String Band's “A Very Cellular Song”. 6 minutes through, and the demented interplay escalates into spiraling, dissonant chaos, Jennings playing an atonal solo atop a confused maelstrom where each member appears to be veering off into his own individual song. 06:41 through, and we enter a Jethro Tull Passion Play-esque/Necromandus moment of bizarre jazzy syncopation, preceding a cavernous, unspeakably spooky passage that synthesizes vintage Cathedral dread and the ponderous, acerbic edge of Comus to fascinating effect. Juxtaposing chasm-like space and melancholic atmosphere with the cherubic, floating dual-tracked female vocals, this section is like 'Megalomania' meets Pearls Before Swine's 'Translucent Carriages' or something, FUCK! Immediately following this spectral experiment, Cathedral prove that they can beat today's finest sludgeflingers at their own unhallowed game, invoking the lead-footed, acrid plod of 'Forest Of Equilibrium'/Winter's 'Into Darkness' once more with a fucking LEVIATHAN of a Celtic Frost-cum-Vitus-self-titled riff that easily holds it own against anything issued by Unearthly Trance or Reverend Bizarre this year. Primal, primordial, thud-thud-thud riffing. APOIMFSPOINFSOIFNWUARGHHHH, CAVEMAN OOGA BOOGA DOOM ALL THE FUCKING WAY!

Once you've survived the positively merciless bout of violence that preceded it, Cathedral launch into a vintage r'n'b ‘70s power trio jam that wouldn't find itself out of place on an early Grand Funk Railroad, settling upon a major scale, upbeat groove before collapsing all optimism in favor of ANOTHER insistent, adamantly SLOW Confessor-like leftfield chug. WHAT THE FUCK?! 18 minutes through, and it appears I spoke far too soon, because THERE IT IS, the Mellow Candle violins! Complete with sparse, morbid, 'Ring Thing' (Pearls Before Swine) esque feeling! ORGASMIC BLISS! 19:50: Classic upbeat ‘70s stomp, like Captain Beyond's self-titled meets Sir Lord Baltimore, but what's this? The violins PERSIST, and chime away gleefully beneath Gaz Jenning's searing lead, do I hear a nod to High Tide's 'Sea Shanties' (or, indeed, Kansas' S/T? hahaha)? Never before have Cathedral's multitude of ‘70s influences been THIS obvious, THIS glaring, THIS brilliant. Closing with a hark back to the freak folk strains that opened the track, Dorrian and company demonstrate that they could very likely have been just as successful etching a career as a psych-folk ensemble, and the fleeting moments of Pentangle-jangle that surface throughout this utterly BRILLIANT song insist that Cathedral have outdone even Dorrian's fledgling understudies Circulus at their own game.

So there you have it. Song of the fucking year. Possibly album of the fucking year, right up there with Burning Saviours and Witchcraft (the latter of which we have Dorrian to thank, again, as it was issued on his Rise Above imprint). If I have ONE complaint, it's the pointlessness of sequencing “Proga Europa” after such a momentous track, one that was clearly destined to close the album out and leave the listener in an awed, dumbfound stupor. “Proga Europa”, essentially 5 minutes of silence followed by a bizarre outburst of psych-fuzz-beat-pop not unlike The Misunderstood or something like that, is pretty anticlimactic, like “Damage Inc.” following “Orion”. I have heard people say that this is the logical continuation of a trend initiated by 'Endtyme' and 'The VIIth Coming', but again, I don't feel as though this record fits comfortably next to those two undertakings. This record exceeds them both in scope and ambition, and just for “The Garden” alone, remains among the boldest statements this trailblazing outfit has issued to date. Pretty much fucking impeccable, and with time, could very well be regarded as a staple in every doom rock collection.

November 20th, 2005