March 24, 2010

Reviewer: Chris

Well, there are two things to be said about Cathedral’s The Guessing Game. One, the album is amazing, and two, it’s two CDs worth of amazing! It was a half-decade in the making, but it’s here and it’s another highlight in the band’s illustrious career.

From the very opening note of Cathedral’s ninth and latest masterpiece, the mood is one of plowing heavy metal that rings any true metal fan’s mental bell right off the bat. When one thinks of successfully-crafted doom, stoner, sludge, or whatever adjective you choose to insert, Cathedral always resonates like the first time one hears Sabbath or Led Zeppelin - you know you’ve encountered and discovered something special. The CD is a cornucopia of some very intelligent, well-crafted music that is a shock to the system in select spots with some very unique instrumentation the Beatles might well have shook their collective heads at (“Funeral of Dreams”), or just straight-ahead hard doom a la “Casket Chasers” that smacks of brilliance.

Cathedral has been around for over two decades, and in all of that time the band almost never failed to impress and enlighten, and that can’t be said about very many bands, even the mighty Sabbath. Vocalist Lee Dorrian is still as potent today (if not more so) than he was on the band’s Forest of Equilibrium back in 1991. His slow-as-molasses, moody delivery through some of the tracks only showcases just how vital a singer he was and still is (and how, sadly, overlooked he remains in the grand picture). Maintaining the current lineup since 1994, Cathedral is one band that has its releases so coveted and anticipated that it’s amazing to me they aren’t more popular with a larger audience, though the core fans know full well who and what Cathedral is. They must be doing everything right with a picture-perfect formula that no one seems to be complaining too much about in metal circles. Those in the fold know well the brilliance that is usually associated with Cathedral. 

The Guessing Game is a wide array of jazzy-influenced passages, heavy metal undertows, and acid-rock devices fused with the typical stoner-rock groove that sets the band in a class all by itself. A song like “Ghost Galleon” breaks the core with a Sabbathy sound quite familiar, but not over-accentuated or trivialized. The tempo and shape of the song changes so sweetly that you are left with the quandary of whether to rock out hard or contemplate on the rock, marble fist affixed to marble chin. The music doesn’t know the meaning of a straight line; when I say the work is all over the place it is most definitely a compliment of high order in this context. To also say that the music is cerebral is an understatement. It’s been a long five-year wait for this one, but it was worth the interim. The CD has it all, combines it all, and manages to please even the most arduous metal fan. If doom metal isn’t your thing, you might well change your mind once you hear The Guessing Game in its glorious entirety.          

This is a definite winner for the metal mind in need of vast expansive venture.

Release Date: March 26, 2010
Label: Nuclear Blast Records 

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1.  Immaculate Misconception
2.  Funeral of Dreams
3.  Painting in the Dark
4.  Death of an Anarchist
5.  The Guessing Game
6.  Edwige's Eyes
7.  Cats, Incense, Candles & Wine

Disc 2
1.  One Dimensional People
2.  The Casket Chasers
3.  La Noche del Buque Maldito
   (aka Ghost Ship of the Blind Dead)
4.  The Running Man
5.  Requiem for the Voiceless
6.  Journeys into Jade

Total playing time:  1:24:48

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Cathedral - The Guessing Game