Cathedral (UK) | Artist
Cathedral was a UK doom metal band formed 1989 in Coventry, England, by Lee Dorrian (vocals), Gaz Jennings (guitar), Mark Griffiths (bass), and Adam Lehan (guitar). Dorrian was the only founding member to remain with Cathedral for its duration. The band came together when Lee Dorrian, who was formerly in hard core band Napalm Death, and Mark Griffiths, a Carcass roadie, met and discussed their love for bands like Black Sabbath, Candlemass, Pentagram, Trouble, and Witchfinder General. The pair added Garry Jennings, formerly of thrash metal band Acid Reign, and later Mike Smail on drums. The band's debut album was The Forest of Equilibrium on Earache records. After the release of the Soul Sacrifice EP, Cathedral signed with major label Columbia Records, which propelled them into the spotlight, with a two-month tour of the United States. But their major label status was shortlived when Columbia dropped the band the following year after the release of 1993's The Ethereal Mirror. The band returned to Earache Records for their next four full-length albums that continued to explore faster rhythms and 1970s-hard rock-influenced guitar riffs, before returning to a relatively slow cadence for Endtyme in 2001. In total Cathedral released ten studio albums, three live albums and eight EP's, before disbanding. They played their last show in Perth, Western Australia during the Soundwave 2012 tour. Standout releases include the albums Forest of Equilibrium (1991), The Ethereal Mirror (1993), The Carnival Bizarre (1995), and the three EP's Soul Sacrifice (1992), Statik Majik (1994), and Cosmic Requiem (1994). Cathedral's critics write them off as merely Black Sabbath clones, but a legion of true fans celebrate their juxtaposition between straightforward rocky songs and crushing, autumnal doom metal. As Dorrian explained when asked about the band's syle; "our original sound was a product of the immediate musical environment combined with the band members' influences: when we first started, the music was a lot more extreme than it is now, a lot more morose and depressing, because that's how we felt at the time. We'd all come out of the death metal scene, or the grindcore scene or whatever.. I just wanted to do something a bit different, so we took all our influences like Vitus and Pentagram and the Obsessed and stuff and decided to take that kind of music one step further, bring it into the 90's, make it more extreme, more heavy and downtuned than any of those bands had done before."
Artist Website: wikipedia/Cathedral
Featured Albums: Cathedral (UK)
Related Artists: Lee Dorrian, Acid Reign, Septic Tank
