When an addict in making music tries to retire, this becomes a true Hercules work.

If a musician took years and years playing and making music, obviously the true retirement comes with his/her death, and not before it. And to be clear about whom I'm speaking about, my words are for one of the greatest workaholic and creative vocalists on Metal scene, Lee Dorrian. After the end of CATHEDRAL on 2013, it was impossible to imagine him sitting on a chair and resting. And now, he, along with Tim Bagshaw (former ELECTRIC WIZARD bassist), and Mark Greening (from the Doom Metal band RAMASSES), started a new band, the ominous and heavy WITH THE DEAD, that is releasing their first and funereal work, the excellent "With The Dead".

Sinister, slow, abrasive and melancholic is some adjectives you could use to describe their Doom Metal orientated music, with very long songs. Of course you could expect something extremely different from what Lee and Tim did before, but their music has a strong and dense personality, hooking us by its darkened melodies and hard sound, and with a deep and thrilling feeling of horror on the songs. Perfect vocals with normal and abrasive tunes, excellent guitar riffs with fine melodic solos, heavy and thunderous slow rhythmic session (what doesn't mean something extremely simple), and binding all these elements together, you'll find a slow form of music, having abrasive melodies and funereal atmosphere. But it's truly excellent!

Jaime Gomez Arellano produced the album. And he is truly an expert on this kind of music, because he worked with CATHEDRAL, GHOST, ANGEL WITCH and many more, so the sound quality is truly abrasive and rusty, but clear and heavy as the band needs to express their best.

These guys are really doing their best, as their six songs are really perfect samples of what they can do.

"Crown of Burning Stars" is abrasive and filled with a dense and really heavy atmosphere, showing very good work on drums and bass guitar. On "The Cross", we see a constant change of rhythm, but keeping the sinister and dense atmosphere of the song, and what excellent riffs. A Sabbathic song is presented on "Nephthys", something near of what our forefathers from BLACK SABBATH, in a track filled with a bitter feeling, and showing excellent vocals. "Living With the Dead" is a perfect and lovely song, with some melodies arising in the middle of the somber tempos and bitter riffs, as well as some clean and sinister clean moments appears. On "I Am Your Virus", some experimental effects appears on the song, so the sum of these experiments with this nasty feeling given by the riffs is something good, but pay attention as well to what bass and drums are doing. And finally, "Screams from My Own Grave" shows al the vocation of these guys to create something really near from horror atmosphere from old films from Hammer Film Productions, filled with fine vocals once more, those particular vocal tunes that Lee has.

"With The Dead" is an excellent album and fine to see Lee and Tim again.<