CATHEDRAL is probably the most supreme doom heavy band ever to emerge from the depths of this melancholic black earth. Their originality combined with their passionate performance have made them a must see for each of their performances. Being such a cult band in the genre, we were very eager to witness their appearance!
The concert started with INFIDEL, whose members where editors of Metal Hammer magazine and the guitar player was a former ACID DEATH guitarist. Their style contains elements from BLACK SABBATH, CANDLEMASS, TROUBLE and other interesting stuff and they played quite well! I think they had quite nice sound. They played stuff from their debut album I, Oathbreaker, which was released earlier this year.
The vocalist (Yannis Poussios was the Greek version of Messiah Marcolin since his voice strongly resembled the unique CANDLEMASS front man. What surprised me most is that the band got on stage right on time and did not delay even for a second to leave the stage. Their professionalism is really admirable!
As it was expected the crowd anticipated CATHEDRAL's performance really anxiously so after the band hit the stage everybody went nuts. They started with Utopian Blaster and it was indeed a blast in our heads. Lee is a really talented front man and manages to make everybody participate into the Doom Metal pandemonium, he and the rest of the guys are about to create. Along with him Gary Jennings and the other two guys really create a steady backbone onto which Lee creates his unique witch inspired performance.
The whole scenery was full of mysticism and doom-inspired aura. The band played songs from its whole discography as well as from its latest magnificent album. Even though they were all in good musical shape, I think one of the drawbacks of the concert was Gary's low guitar level sound - in other words we sometimes struggled to listen to his Doom Metal huge riffing machine! The only negative thing was a mistake in Ride, which made CATHEDRAL lose a part of the song for some seconds. It was really funny seeing Dorian and Jennings trying to catch the tempo. After 2-3 seconds, they made it and continued the song normally. You just had to see Dorian's face!
The band did not play for over an hour and a half when they got off the stage. Of course we couldn't let them get away like this and everybody started screaming the classic we want more phrase. CATHEDRAL were generous enough to get on the stage for an encore that would leave us wondering where do they get all this fucking energy from! They played two more songs and not any songs, Vampire Sun and Hopkins (where everyone was screaming their ass off!). Lee's performance was something more than incredible proving that CATHEDRAL remain one of the best Doom bands out there. This guy was more as if he was performing a ritual than performing live!
Here you go with the set list:
Utopian Blaster
Soul Sacrifice
North Berwick Witch Trials
Autumn Twilight
Skullflower
Corpsecycle
Upon Azrael's Wings
Ride
Ebony Tears
Grim Luxuria
Encore
Hopkins
Vampire Sun
Until the next time... No more ebony tears!
