Just a few notes in and already my eyes are filled with tears… not joy
of course, though for many fans of Cathedral's a brand new record would
be just cause, but what I'm hearing is such a doom-driven drone that I
can't help but be consumed with sorrow and mental anguish for all the
sins of my past… And could it be that the end is near, as the title
might indicate?
I loved their "Caravan Beyond Redemption" release from
a couple years back -- that was them at their peak of astral intensity,
though less so of the death crawl more associative with their
troublesome past. The Sabbath riffs pour out like a blood spurt
splattering over the ghostly image that appears within this somber
respite…
"Endtyme" is a return to the beginning of sorts for Lee
Dorian's once and again doom machine, plodding, and preaching for the
nether-worldly and disturbed… Not full circle by any means and no need
to be, this is more a culmination of the brooding early style, which
borrows from a measure of their middle-year progression, spitting the
psychedelia with a raging fury that burns reality quickly into ash.
I
resist the Stoner-Rock personification that's often overused yet it
exists, only in a much more darkened state -- when I say "dread" I'm not
going lightly. Shivering and cold, the down-trodden measures and
grinding choral attributes clench tighter around this near-lifeless
genre they helped create and spawn for the many wintry tales that would
follow -- yet there's a more exciting aspect to where "Melancholy Emperor,"
or "Whores to Oblivion" are concerned, musically dynamic without the
sacrifice of heritage. "Endtyme," 2001, let thy spatial descent begin…
