Like the entirety of Cathedral‘s decades-spanning discography, 2002’s The VIIth Coming is owed a reissue. Though as to who even own the rights, I don’t know where you might start. The album was released through Dream Catcher Records in the band’s native UK, and Spitfire had a CD out in the US, Toy’s Factory with a bonus track in Japan. Hellion Records released it in Brazil in 2003, and Vinyl Maniacs did a 2LP version in Sweden. Metal Mind had a tape out in Poland. You get the point. Secret Records re-released a vinyl in 2015 and has done a CD this year, but I’m thinking more in the line of what Hammerheart Records has done for Trouble: a full catalog remaster/reissue. Get it all out there for people who want to dig in and do it with the due appreciation for what this band accomplished.

Recorded in July 2002 by Kit Woolven and released that Fall, The VIIth Coming was structured as a double-vinyl during the period when the CD era was actively giving over to digital-everything. The album runs 53 minutes — 59 if you chase down that Japanese edition — and arrived just one year behind 2001’s Endtyme, the Coventry doomers’ sixth record. And in the arc of their career, this was a special time, bringing together the formative doom metal of their earliest work with the more heavy rock-minded offerings — and I don’t give a shit what you say, those records are underrated — that followed. Endtyme did this well, but The VIIth Coming refined the method to a stellar degree. The weight in Gaz Jennings‘ chug on closer “Halo of Fire” and the accompanying lumber of Brian Dixon‘s drums and Leo Smee‘s bass. The way the eight and a half minutes of that song’s LP1 counterpart “The Empty Mirror” taps the best of ’90s-era doom, makes it swing, and still finds room for guest organ work (credited throughout the album to Munch). The Dave Patchett phoenix cover art and complementary design from SunnO)))‘s Stephen O’Malley. Vocalist Lee Dorrian‘s disgust with the everyday on songs like “Resisting the Ghost,” “Iconoclast,” which makes a hook out of classic anarchist sloganeering, and “Congregation of Sorcerer’s.”

From the outset of “Phoenix Rising,” Cathedral‘s purpose in bringing together rock and doom is right there for the listener to behold. The band’s sound is full and densely weighted, and Dorrian‘s vocals carry their dark tales that make even the image of a burning phoenix rising in triumph seem somehow grim and grey. “Resisting the Ghost,” which is just two and a half minutes long and the speediest track on the outing as one might expect, is no less catchy than the opener before it, and “Skullflower” provides a middle ground before the more atmospheric, acoustic-laced “Aphrodite’s Winter” follows through on the band’s more progressive aspects. Again, the organ work here is key, but the current of acoustic running alongside Jennings‘ electric lines is part of it as well, and as with the album as a whole, it’s everybody working together to convey the sense of ‘doom-plus’ that defines it. As far as Cathedral went in one direction or another during their time together, they never lost that foundation in doom. It’s there as much in “Aphrodite’s Winter” as “The Empty Mirror” and “Halo of Fire.” It’s just a matter of what they can make doom do for their songs, which by the time they got to this seventh record was more or less anything they wanted.

“Nocturnal Fist” and “Iconoclast” mirror “Phoenix Rising” and “Resisting the Ghost” on the first LP, but “Iconoclast” is longer and spaces out for a jammier feel in its second half anchored by Smee‘s bass before the verse jolts back in en route to a final chorus of, “No gods, no masters, no authority/Only yourself/Divine disciples control your destiny/Believe in yourself,” leaving zero space to argue as the track ends cold and gives way to the slamming swagger of “Black Robed Avenger,” like a boogie riff at one-third speed, and the more aggro shove of “Congregation of Sorcerer’s,” which still manages to work in cowbell because Cathedral were a mystery and mysteries are complex sometimes and whatever maybe there’s a cowbell here. “Halo of Fire” is a darkened victory lap of bleak aural force, but even it picks up tempo in its midsection before rolling the album into sample-laced organ oblivion. A last slog to hammer the point home of ultimate doom, and I swear, if you read the lyrics, they could just as easily be about Boris Johnson steering Brexit as about the end of the world. Just saying. Some things are timeless, and the unending apocalypse would seem to be one of them.

As I recall, they came to the US during this era, though it might’ve been ahead of their next record. Cathedral would issue three more full-lengths after The VIIth Coming. They signed to Nuclear Blast ahead of 2005’s The Garden of Unearthly Delights (discussed here), stayed there for 2010’s The Guessing Game (review here) and completed their run with 2013’s The Last Spire (review here) through Dorrian‘s own Rise Above Records. For a doom band who toured with Black Sabbath and had a creative arc across nearly a quarter-century that helped define more than one niche genre, Cathedral are arguably still underrated. Yes, they played doom at a time doom wasn’t ‘cool,’ but to go back to their work now is to find it still resonates these years after the fact, and that their progression from 1991’s Forest of Equilibrium (discussed here; reissue review here) forward never stopped, even as they sought to summarize the entirety of it with their final album.

Two live albums were released on vinyl last year, also through Rise Above, and of course it’s rock and roll so one never says never as regards a full reunion, but Dorrian‘s got With the Dead and Smee is there as well, Jennings was in Lucifer, and Dixon was most recently drumming for The Skull, so there’s plenty happening in that camp, even before you get to Dorrian‘s label work, etc. Whether it happens eventually or it doesn’t, one can never say Cathedral didn’t deliver a full, landmark career worthy of ongoing appreciation. The VIIth Coming is an essential part of their story.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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Yesterday I slept until 7AM. Today until a bit before six. This was a direct result of The Pecan going back to school starting on Wednesday. I did not get everything I wanted done this week — the Blackwater Holylight interview will be posted next week — but I did manage to book two more interviews and to review a whole bunch of stuff and that’s gonna have to do for now. I do not plan to pick up my laptop tomorrow. Family is in town from CT and my contingent from up the hill is coming down to hang out and that will be wonderful.

We had some bumps getting The Pecan to school, some bus miscommunication, but today I didn’t get bit once and that’s a definite win. I’ll take it.

Highlight of the week, aside from that sleep, was King Crimson sharing the live review. That was an unexpected bit of bliss, and while I don’t for one second imagine the band does their own social media management, it’s nice to have one’s work acknowledged by a band at that level regardless. Clutch doesn’t even share my reviews usually, for example.

Nothing against them for that, obviously, and if I’ve got Clutch on my brain, it’s because they’re playing new songs on tour and they’re the next show I want to see. May or may not happen, to be honest.

Slated a sixth day for the next Quarterly Review this morning. That starts Sept. 27. It’ll go as long as I need it to go.

No Gimme show this week, but I need to turn in a playlist. Any requests?

Trying to think if there’s any other housekeeping stuff that needs to be done around here, but not really, so I’m gonna punch out early and go read some before I need to pick up the kid at school. Fingers crossed for bus on Monday, but we’ll see.

Hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, whatever you’re doing, and wear a mask if you’re out and about. Hydrate, always.

FRM.

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