2010 December « Dave's Blog

On the weekend of the heaviest snow ever, it was time to forge away across the grim and frostbitten plains of Lancashire for this Pagan/Black extravaganza in Manchester’s Satan’s Hollow, which is to iD Software’s level designers as NYC’s Limelight was to H. R. Giger. Also in attendance were Jimmer, and a bunch of people I vaguely knew from his Livejournal and/or lj metal_community. Beer was Tetley’s, but hey, at least it wasn’t Boddington’s.

On to the music: Old Corpse Road kicked things off and were perhaps the most to my taste of the whole evening. Primitive Graven Image, next, were also good, and were a man down with one guitar player having to switch to bass. They apparently value their harmonies, and I suspect that with a full troupe they might have stolen the show. Eibon La Furies were ridiculous Victorian Gothic metal who managed to be a bit silly without being annoying in the slightest. Stylistically they were the least up my street of the evening, but even so enjoyable.
Burial provided a death metal interlude, and a welcome one at that, and then it was on to the short-haired dudes who looked like they were in the wrong nightclub. Great music, but come on lads, grow some hair and buy some black clothes!
Victory feast was adequate Chinese.
Hotel was barely adequate place called Mercahnts.
Train service home was not even close to adequate and took HOURS.

Photos of the evening, swiped from Yolanda’s Facebook:

Dec

Cathedral Past and Present

By bighairydave Leave a Comment

Categories: shows

In 1991, a smaller but almost as hairy Dave saw Cathedral open for Morbid Angel and Sadus at London Astoria. I didn’t like it, didn’t get it. At that time I was all about faster, harder and louder. Yes I was a devoted Black Sabbath fan and had a couple of Candlemass CDs but I was far from the doom afficionado I have become in more recent years. These long drawn-out slow songs with the miserable descending harmonies and weird vocals did nothing for me at the time.
Fast forward to the summer of 2010 when Lee Dorrian told me that Cathedral’s 20th anniversary celebration would include a reunion of the “Forest of Equilibrium” line-up to play said album in its entirety. Months of anticipation ensued, until I awoke bright and early on that date of legend, December 3rd. And by “bright and early” I mean with a crippling hangover resulting from ill-advised beverage choice at the previous night’s Shrinebuilder concert, and to the pitter-patter of two rampaging, shrieking toddlers who got started barely four hours after I’d crawled into bed.
Nevertheless, after a pub lunch things were looking up and all the “omg-we-weren’t-expecting-cold-weather-in-the-winter” delays from the railways could do was make me arrive exactly on time rather than my usual way too early.
Anyway, just after 7pm the 1991 lineup of Cathedral took the stage, and from the beginning of “Commiserating The Celebration” to the end of “Reaching Happiness, Touching Pain”, I loved it. What a fool my teenage self had been! “Forest of Equilibrium” was a genius fusion of Trouble’s gloomy twin guitar harmonics, death metal riffage and a touch of twisted flower power psychedelia, capped off with Lee’s bizarre vocals and to hear it performed live in 2010 with my love of Doom and my knowledge of the factors that influenced this record and the things that in turn were to follow it was a rare treat. The seeds of the future Cathedral are there in Gaz’s unique riffs and the occasional mid-tempo headbanging passage, but so are cues for all the extreme forms of doom metal that were to follow.
Of course, not every song on “Forest” is a perfect classic and Cathedral’s follow-up set with the classic Fab Four lineup demonstrated that, no, they haven’t wasted the last 20 years. As fascinating as it was to see the “Forest” set itself, its juxtaposition with the 2010 vintage brought into sharp relief the development of the band over two decades. This evening emphasised the quality of the songs, the polish of the performance and the chemistry between the members of the current lineup as much as being a chance to relive the past.