Cathedral

Cathedral are a doom metal band from Coventry, England. The group forged a link between early doom metal and a 1990s extreme metal aesthetic, making doom slower and heavier. Their debut album, Forest of Equilibrium, is considered a classic of the genre. They later on changed their doom style, playing it in a more uptempo and groove-oriented fashion.

History

The band was founded in 1989 by Lee Dorrian (former singer of grindcore pioneers Napalm Death), Mark 'Griff' Griffiths (a Carcass roadie) and Garry 'Gaz' Jennings (formerly of thrash metal upstarts Acid Reign). At first they played very heavy and slow doom metal that was first released through Rise Above Records, vocalist Lee Dorrian's indie label, before signing to Earache. They later incorporated elements of progressive rock into their sound when the band signed to Columbia Records in the USA in 1992 (while still under contract with Earache U.K.). They were later dropped by Columbia Records in 1994. The band continued with Earache Records until 2000. Then signed to Dream Catcher Records for one lp and a tour. In 2004 Cathedral signed to their current label Nuclear Blast.

In 1989 Lee Dorrian left his former band Napalm Death mainly because he was getting sick of the punk scene and did not like the death metal direction Napalm Death was heading towards. Cathedral was formed after Lee Dorrian and Mark Griffiths met and discussed their love for doom bands like Candlemass, Dream Death, Pentagram, Trouble, and Witchfinder General.

The only original band members in the current line-up are Lee Dorrian and Garry 'Gaz' Jennings on guitars, although Jennings did once leave the band in their early history, only to rejoin shortly afterwards.

After no news from the band since they toured for The Garden of Unearthly Delights, they played their first show in two years at Damnation Festival 2008, in Leeds. They played a new song and have confirmed dates for 2009 including Hellfest.

Style and lyrical themes

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When we first started, the music of Cathedral 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, and I was just as much into the slower stuff as I was into the faster stuff. 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. That was our first and foremost ambition, and I think we probably achieved that when we did our first album.
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Dorian has talked in the past about his issues with the categorisation done by the music press, especially with the "stoner rock" tag:

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To me, the stoner thing is just another thing for the media to try and understand something that's quite hard for them to comprehend, putting a category on it just to make it accessible to the readers, when really its just good old traditional heavy rock, heavy Metal, played with like a bit of enthusiasm and energy.



I think at the end of the day, if you want to call it disco doom, which is totally fucking ridiculous, stoner doom, stoner rock, it doesn't really matter, its just heavy metal heavy rock music.
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Members

Current members
Lee Dorrian - Vocals
Garry "Gaz" Jennings - Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Backing Vocals and Drums
Leo Smee - Bass
Brian Dixon - Drums
Former members
Mark Griffiths - Bass
Adam Lehan - Guitar
Ben Mochrie - Drums
Mike Smail - Drums
Mark Ramsey Wharton - Drums, Whistle and Flute
Scott Carlson - Bass
Victor Griffin - Guitar
Joe Hasselvander - Drums
Barry Stern - Drums
Dave Hornyak - Drums

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Original Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral