CD Review: Cathedral – In Memorium

CD Review: Cathedral – In Memoriam
Rise Above Records
All Access Rating: B

Cathedral - In Memoriam 2015

Taking doom metal to a more solemn and spectral place than it had ever gone before, Cathedral's 1991 album Forest of Equilibrium was grim, suffocating stuff, indeed.

A monastery of singer Lee Dorrian's animalistic grunts, funereal melodies and spellbinding, majestic swells of malevolence greeted its visitors. With an air of mystery about it, the seminal work of these monks built monolithic walls of blackened, disciplined riffs, and its architecture was jaw-dropping. However, prior to constructing this imposing sonic citadel, the UK gloom mongers made a self-financed cassette recording  – originally released in October, 1990 – that documents Cathedral's raw stages of early development, and for that alone, it's an interesting find.

Seemingly caked in dirt and filth and so punishingly heavy it damages internal organs, the lurching, lumbering four original tracks  – "Mourning of a New Day," "All Your Sins," "Ebony Tears" and "March" – slam into ears like bombs, all swinging like a weighty pendulum back and forth in monotonous fashion, as the rusted-out gears of Cathedral's machinery grind ponderously along. Only minor differences in tempo and tonality separate them, as Dorrian's gnarly, but more discernible, vocals seem to bellow from the bowels of the earth – here is the wicked progeny of Pentagram and Saint Vitus, covered in afterbirth and screaming for the cord to be cut, where Forest of Equilibrium sounded somewhat more polished, more mature and dynamic.

And while the primordial rawness and deliberate churn of these embryonic efforts is jarring, they're also strangely absorbing, as In Memorium heaves to and fro, until ramming its massive hull into a five-song clutch of live recordings from Holland and Belgium in 1991. Here are found concert versions of "Ebony Tears," "All Your Sins" and "Mourning of a New Day" that implode on impact, growing in strength, with gleaming, melodic twin-guitar arcs shooting out of sonic rubble and Cathedral also bludgeoning "Neophytes for Serpent Eve" and "Intro/Comiserating the Celebration" to death. The CD version of Rise Above Records' release of In Memoriam comes with a live DVD of Cathedral performing at Groningen in the Netherlands that same year, making for a compelling package stuffed with an eight-page booklet and rare photos. And there's a vinyl edition as well, all of which present a picture of a nascent band, now defunct, finding its way and transforming a genre into something even more menacing and foul.
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Lucifer – Lucifer I

CD Review: Lucifer – Lucifer I
Rise Above Records
All Access Rating: A

Lucifer - Lucifer I 2015

Having buried The Oath a year ago, witchy singer Johanna Sadonis ran straight into welcoming embrace of Lucifer, demonic necromancers that have resuscitated the hoary corpse of '70s proto-metal and tortured blues for nefarious purposes.

A three-piece she formed that includes Garry Jennings, formerly of U.K. doom-metal mongers Cathedral, as co-songwriter and studio guitarist, Lucifer is the cover subject of the latest issue of Decibel magazine and Lucifer I, from Rise Above Records, is the first spell they've cast.

Heirs to the fuzzed-out, doom-laden stomp, sinister swing and distorted propulsion of Black Sabbath, the "occult-rock" revivalists also pay their respects to Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, Blue Cheer and Led Zeppelin on a spectral, yet ruggedly heavy, debut album cloaked in gloom. Seeming to ring out from beyond the grave, Sadonis's distant, haunting vocals only enhance the chilling effect of Lucifer's sinister lyrics, and for everything else about Lucifer's birth that make black masses salivate, it's her singing that calls us to worship.

Lucifer's Decibel magazine cover

Their hotly anticipated maiden voyage of the damned is full of dark, slowly churning dirges, such as "Purple Pyramid" and "Sabbath," where eerie church bells predict a funereal descent. What separates Lucifer from the horde of Sabbath pretenders is the songwriting wizardry of Lucifer I and its ability to authentically conjure the black magic of influences such as Pentagram, as they wickedly unleash the hellhounds in the gathering momentum of opener "Abracadabra" and "Izrael" embeds the mournful, spine-tingling wail of Sadonis in solemn, melodic sacraments and seductive hooks.

What lessons Lucifer learned from grandfathers Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Geezer Butler are ingrained in "Morning Star," "Total Eclipse" and "A Grave For Each One Of Us," all of them blustery cauldrons of evil riffs that suddenly, but artfully, shift gears and hijack these songs, demanding they go to places – driven in a hearse, of course – that are similar, but different, from those already marked on whatever map they're following. In the process, the tracks complete metamorphoses into strange, compelling new shapes and personalities. Somebody has made one incredible deal with the devil.
– Peter Lindblad