Formed in 1989 by ex-Napalm Death vocalist Lee Dorrian, Cathedral were one of the longest-running and most influential doom metal bands of the last 40 years Although they split in 2013 following swansong album The Last Spire, their legacy still runs deep. As the band prepared to wind things up for the final time, Dorrian looked back over the smoke-wreathed career of a band who helped keep the doom flag flying.

During the 80s, doom metal was in a fractured state and barely a ‘scene’ at all. Candlemass and Trouble enjoyed some mainstream success, but others – including the likes of Pentagram, Witchfinder General and Saint Vitus – existed in their own little bubbles, starved of support and exposure. Their fans, however, although scattered and few in number, were extremely dedicated, and it took just one of them – Lee Dorrian himself – to help set the stage for doom to develop into the thriving underground movement it is today.

Disillusioned with Napalm Death’s changing musical direction and with the media circus which surrounded them during their first flush of success, Lee set Cathedral in motion following a drunken conversation with fellow doom fan Mark ‘Griff’ Griffiths. The pair hooked up with ex-Acid Reign guitarist Garry ‘Gaz’ Jennings – also a closet doom freak – and began working on material, determined to create the heaviest doom metal possible.

After demoing some painfully slow songs which Lee describes as “one chord a minute”, the band added Gaz’s former Acid Reign bandmate Adam Lehan on second guitar, fleshing out the sound and style which shaped their 1991 debut album, Forest Of Equilibrium. With chops honed following tours with the likes of Paradise Lost, Morbid Angel and The Young Gods, Cathedral hit the studio fully focused and raring to go, and Forest Of Equilibrium remains both a fearsome slab of doom and arguably the band’s definitive album.

“There are albums that are better produced or maybe have better songs,” says Lee, “but I think it’s the most focused album we’ve ever done. It captures a moment in time when we were doing everything against the grain and I think it’s the best.”

The arrival of drummer Mark Wharton – also ex-Acid Reign – and 1992’s Soul Sacrifice EP heralded a shift in style which pointed the way towards future developments.

“Gaz and Adam’s writing style advanced really quickly,” Lee explains. “From writing really doomy, droney stuff, they were coming up with more complex ideas. It was a real turning point, although I didn’t actually want the band to change. As much as I didn’t want us to feel restricted, I didn’t want the songs to become too bouncy. I hated that word! A song like Autumn Twilight is quite bouncy and it took me a while to be convinced this was the direction we should be going in, but I went with it and in the end felt it was a good move forward.”

The changes on Soul Sacrifice, however, prepared no one for the enormous leap taken with the band’s second album, 1993’s The Ethereal Mirror. Cathedral had just found themselves on major label Columbia Record in the US due to a deal made by their label Earache, and were under severe pressure to deliver. It was a big break for which they were desperately unprepared, in more ways than one.

“If we were gonna release a record on one of the world’s biggest major labels, they were gonna want it to sound good,” Lee recalls, “whatever your definition of ‘good’ is. They were gonna want it to have a wider appeal than Forest… did, even though they said they wouldn’t have minded if we’d done an album like that but with better production, which was kinda missing the point. So this meant big studio, big producer and all that went with that. So we went from being in a basement with a friend of ours helping us out to Manor Studios where [Mike Oldfield’s 70s prog classic] Tubular Bells and [the Sex Pistols’] Never Mind The Bollocks were recorded. The producer was saying, ‘You guys suck! You can’t play!’ I don’t know if that was a tactic to get us to perform better, but the songs just weren’t ready when we went to the studio. But somehow we managed to pull it out of the bag. All things considered, it’s amazing it turned out the way it did.”

Despite the stresses of the studio and the fact that, in private, the band weren’t particularly happy with the album, The Ethereal Mirror was a success. In the ensuing whirlwind of touring and promotion, however, trouble was brewing.

“We were put on tours that we didn’t really wanna do,” explains Lee. “It caused disillusion within the band and we started drifting apart. It was sad, because we’d got that far doing it on our own terms. Slowly the cracks started to show. Griff was the first to leave, then Adam. To me, they were both vital parts. Eventually the whole thing imploded and Columbia dropped us. It was just me and Gaz left.”

There then followed a period which Lee looks back on as “bewildered and confused”, during which he and Gaz struggled to meet the band’s commitments, enlisting a string of hired hands just to make it through.

Eventually, however, after much frustration, they recruited bassist Leo Smee and drummer Brian Dixon, both of whom went on to become longtime members. Wary of losing any more momentum, the band then hit the studio to record their third album, 1995’s The Carnival Bizarre.

“We had a new lease of life. Recording that album was great fun,” says Lee. “It’s got great energy and the vibe is what makes it.”

Like its predecessor, Carnival… received rave reviews which inevitably led to a heavy touring schedule. So heavy, in fact, that it left the band little time to prepare their next record. The pressure was so intense that, expected to come up with an album’s worth of lyrics in one week, Lee quit the band. Or tried to, at least.

“I just said, ‘Fuck this, I’m out of here!’ I was dead serious, but the rest of the band carried on, ignored me, and got ready for the studio!”

Although Lee soon changed his mind, the studio sessions for 1996’s Supernatural Birth Machine were at times far from fun.

“There isn’t a single song on the album that I rehearsed even once,” groans Lee. “Most of them are first takes and a lot of the lyrics were written 10 minutes before they were recorded. It was hideous. Because there was a two-year gap between Ethereal… and Carnival…, we felt we had a lot of time to catch up on. We’d decided that no matter what the situation, we’d do an album a year after Carnival…, which was stupid. We were nowhere near prepared to record it, which was a shame.”

Haunted by this, they were in no rush to head back to the studio which, ironically, presented them with the opposite problem when they did eventually return in 1998 to record Caravan Beyond Redemption.

“I think we actually spent too much time on Caravan…!” laughs Lee. “We tried too many different things that, on reflection, weren’t really cohesive enough.”

The album also highlighted just how far Cathedral had moved beyond their early sound, a situation Lee in particular was weary of.

“I was getting disillusioned”, he admits. “I thought we were drifting away from real heaviness. The songs were starting to sound too polished and I was starting to have bust-ups with the other guys. So I said, ‘If we don’t make this next album the heaviest we’ve ever made, I’m gonna fucking think seriously about leaving the band. Again.’ At first they didn’t agree with me, but eventually they came round to my way of thinking, and that’s what led to Endtyme. In a way, it completely destroyed everything we’d done up to that point. It was almost like staring over again.”

Released in 2001, Endtyme dragged the band back to their roots, but it didn’t last long.

“I thought Endtyme would be a turning point where we went back to being a completely heavy band,” says Lee, “but with The VIIth Coming it kinda slipped back to where it had been with the album before. But to be honest, I’d kicked up such a storm and got my way with Endtyme, I just kept my mouth shut. I didn’t wanna seem to be like I was bullying everyone into doing something they didn’t wanna do.”

The long gap between The VIIth Coming and 2005’s The Garden Of Unearthly Delights was down to a number of things, chief among which was the very question of the band’s existence.

“We were working out if we wanted to do this anymore,” explains Lee. “The signs of the band coming to an end started back then. I wasn’t tired of being in a band; I was tired of fighting to be in a band. We really believed in it but every-thing seemed to be a struggle. So we went and did a bit of soul searching.”

Souls duly searched, Cathedral finally returned in 2010 with The Guessing Game, a sprawling double album and their most adventurous yet. Although not the last Cathedral album, as some – including the band themselves – initially imagined, even the possibility seemed to take the pressure off and open the creative floodgates. Progressive and eclectic, it was a fine achievement and would have made a fitting epitaph. During the ensuing tour, however, old wounds re-opened.

“The usual problems were still there,” says Lee “The old signs were starting to show. If everyone was in it 100 per cent and for the same reasons, we’d still be here now. It just got to the point where I didn’t have the time, the energy or the fight to do this anymore. I told Gaz and he basically agreed.”

Once the decision to split had been taken, the band embarked on a series of farewell shows, including a date in London which was recorded for the 2011 live album Anniversary. Touring decks thus cleared, they then began work on the final Cathedral album, The Last Spire. Huge, crushing and heavier than hell, it’s the sound of a band with nothing left to prove.

“It’s relentless, flat-out doom!” smiles Lee. “It’s almost like we’ve recorded our second album last.”

Few bands have done as much as Cathedral to shape the development of doom. From songs you can dance to, to songs that make you want to slit your wrists, their music is colourful even when it’s pitch black, and always inventive. If there is such a thing as a perfect ending, maybe this is it.

“We really had to get this right,” Lee concludes. “The way we ended the band was almost as important as the way we started.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer 244, April 2013

Pro-shot video of Green Lung’s full set at Bloodstock Open Air 2024 has been published online.

The Derbyshire festival published the footage last week, which shows the London doom metal beloveds levelling the weekender with a 45-minute, eight-song set. Watch it below.

Green Lung played Bloodstock as part of a stacked festival tour that saw them support such heroes as Opeth and Clutch. The band were playing to promote their latest album This Heathen Land, released in 2023 to rave reviews. Metal Hammer awarded the record four stars out of five and called it “a beguiling, surprisingly diverse concoction of killer riffs, bewitching folklore and knockout songs”.

Next year, Green Lung will headline a tour across Europe from February to March. The run will include their biggest-ever UK shows, held at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town and Manchester’s O2 Ritz. Support will come from Unto Others and Satan’s Satyrs. See below for dates and details.

Formed in 2017, Green Lung have become one of the UK’s most loved rising bands. Their music was inspired by such 70s hard rock pioneers as Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, while their lyrics take from folk horror stories and the pagan folklore of their birthplaces in Norfolk and Devon.

Guitarist Scott Black told Prog last year: “We very specifically wanted to make This Heathen Land a love letter to albums produced by Martin Birch in the mid-1970s, like Deep Purple’s Stormbringer and all the Rainbow albums. It was a time when metal hadn’t calcified into what it became. It was pre-New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, with weird synths and a lot of prog influence everywhere. There were a lot of eccentric musical choices that we wanted to evoke on this record.”

Of their folkloric influences, vocalist Tom Templar added: “When I was moving from my parents’ house [in Norfolk], I found a bunch of old lyrics that weren’t that far from Green Lung, even then. It sat with me. A lot of that British folklore stuff, it’s done in a twee, silly way. I’m not saying that Green Lung isn’t sometimes silly, but I needed to land it in this place where it felt mysterious, exciting and interesting; not the Morris-dancey, ‘hey-nonny-no’ end of folklore.”

Bloodstock festival will return to Catton Park, Derbyshire, in August 2025, headlined by Trivium, Machine Head and Gojira. The event added 13 new acts to next year’s bill on Tuesday (October 15). Weekend tickets are already sold-out.

Green Lung 2025 European tour dates:

Feb 06: Gothenburg Pustervik, Sweden
Feb 07:  Oslo John Dee, Norway
Feb 08: Stockholm - Debaser Strand, Sweden
Feb 10: Tampere Olympia-Kortteli, Finland
Feb 11: Helsinki Korjaamo, Finland
Feb 13: Copenhagen Amager Bio, Denmark
Feb 14: Hamburg Gruenspan, Germany
Feb 15: Antwerp Zappa, Belgium
Feb 17: Bristol Marble Factory, UK
Feb 18: Dublin The Academy, Ireland
Feb 20: Glasgow The Garage, UK
Feb 21: Manchester O2 Ritz, UK
Feb 22: London O2 Forum Kentish Town, UK
Feb 23: Utrecht Tivoli Vredenburg-Pandora, Netherlands
Feb 24: Esch-Sur-Alzette Rockhal, Luxembourg
Feb 25: Paris Trabendo, France
Feb 26: Toulouse Rex, France
Feb 28: Lisboa LAV Lisboa ao Vivo, Portugal
Mar 01: Madrid Sala Copernico, Spain
Mar 02: Barcelona Razzmatazz 2, Spain
Mar 04: Milan Legend Club Milano, Italy
Mar 05: Vienna Flex, Austria
Mar 06: Munich Backstage, Germany
Mar 07: Berlin LIDO, Germany
Mar 08 : Bochum Matrix, Germany

Finnish doom metal squad Swallow The Sun have debuted brand-new single Innocence Was Long Forgotten.

The track was released yesterday (July 2), along with a music video directed by Vesa Ranta and Petri Marttinen.

Innocence Was Long Forgotten was produced and mixed by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me The Horizon, Muse, Enter Shikari), mastered by Tony Lindgren at Fascination Street Studios and recorded by guitarist Juho Räihä at SoundSpiral Audio.

The band comment on the song: “All the new Swallow The Sun music felt like an ice dagger through a sleeping heart.

“So we wanted to work with a powerful producer, Dan Lancaster, to push this dagger even deeper into this heart of ours.”

Innocence Was Long Forgotten is the first piece of new Swallow The Sun music since their eighth studio album, Moonflowers, came out in 2021.

Much of Moonflowers, along with its critically acclaimed 2019 predecessor When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light, was inspired by the passing of co-guitarist and lead songwriter Juha Raivio’s longtime partner, musician Aleah Stanbridge.

Stanbridge passed away from cancer in 2016, aged 39.

Raivio said in a rare interview with Decibel magazine in 2019: “Every word and note I wrote, I wrote for Aleah on this album and about my own battle [since her passing].

“This is [a] very personal and hard subject for me to speak [about] and I would rather leave it all to the music to speak [about] and for the words on this album to explain as it is all there.

“But to say something, this album name comes from the words of Aleah, ‘When a shadow is forced into the light’, and that was exactly what I needed to do. To push myself out from the shadows, as I had been pretty much a hermit in the woods for two and a half years, I had to push this album out.”

It is unclear at time of publication whether Innocence Was Long Forgotten is a standalone single or will appear on an as-yet-unannounced ninth Swallow The Sun album.

The band have one live date announced for 2024, which will take place at the Helsinki Metal Fest in Helsinki, Finland, on August 9.

As the bassist and driving force behind Swedish doom heavyweights Candlemass, Leif Edling doesn’t hide the debt he owes to Black Sabbath, and their landmark 1970 debut album in particular.

“Black Sabbath’s first album was so important,” says Edling, whose own band helped shape the modern doom scene via such classics as 1986’s Epicus Doomicus Metallicus and 1987’s Nightfall. “It had an impact on everybody at that time. If you were interested in hard and heavy rock music, you couldn’t ignore it. I grew up with it, and it had a huge impact on me. Nothing sounded like it at the time. Nothing sounds like it now. It’s a beast!”

Except Edling’s admiration of Black Sabbath goes above and beyond the call of duty. Where most people are content to own a copy or two on CD or LP, the 60-year-old owns a staggering 71 different vinyl versions of that one record, from original copies to reissues to international versions. His dedication to the album is ironic, given it’s not even his favourite Sabbath album.

“Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is my favourite,” he says. “It’s got everything. The songs, the sound, the production… it doesn’t have one lame second on it.”

Still, we’re here to talk about that debut and Edling’s impressive, if slightly odd obsession with it. So, what is this that stands before us?

What made you want to collect 71 different vinyl versions of Black Sabbath’s debut album?

Many years ago I went to a friend’s place to buy some Rush records off him. I bought their first album, on the Moon label, and the Not Fade Away single. But what really caught my eye was his Yes collection. Not only did he have a huge number of Yes records, but he also collected Relayer specifically. I thought it was madness, but a bit brilliant too, so I stole his crazy idea and started to buy the first Sabbath whenever I saw it. It was the one that started metal so to speak, and extremely groundbreaking. Nice cover too.

When did you first hear Sabbath?

Actually, it all started with Paranoid. My mother gave me a copy when I was eight or nine years old – this was somewhere around 1971 or 1972. A friend that lived a few houses away from me played it and I was hooked immediately. His big brother owned it, and he also had the first Black Sabbath album. It scared the shit out of me with the cover, the rain and bell in the intro, the ominous atmosphere. I was spellbound. Couldn’t resist it!

I didn’t own my first copy of Black Sabbath until years later. When I was 14, in 1977, I started to take the train to Stockholm and the record shops there. I bought a used beaten up copy of it that I still have. A couple of years later, when the NEMS versions turned up, I bought one of those. They were cheap but sounded better than my scratched and dirty original.

How did you go from owning one copy of Black Sabbath to owning 71 copies?

I’ve collected Sabbath pretty much all my life. Back in the day, I could only afford to occasionally buy the albums when they came out, but I moved to Stockholm from the suburb of Upplands Väsby when I was 25 and started to go to record fares and second hand shops. My collection also started to grow when we were out on tour with Candlemass. Every time we came home from the States I had a  big heap of records with me.

I still go to record fairs, still go to the second hand shops in Stockholm, still buy vinyl on our travels abroad, not to mention ebay. I still enjoy buying records, and take Saturdays off sometimes to go around the record shops of Stockholm. I don’t find much Sabbath that I don’t have already, but it’s nice to go record digging and there’s always stuff to buy.

Do you specifically collect different pressings of Black Sabbath – international versions, reissues, coloured vinyl versions? Or do you just buy any old copy of the album you come across in a second record shop?

Well, after a while I couldn’t remember what I had or not, so when I saw a copy of the Black Sabbath album, I bought it. Of course I ended up with a bunch of the same pressings after a while. But most of those I just swapped away on the next record excursion, so no big problem. I still have some extra copies but I really don’t care. Most of them are unique anyway – pressings from Singapore, Taiwan, South America, Israel, Spain, Australia, Korea, Russia, etc. I’ve got most of the pressings of the first album, but I’m sure there’s still pressings out there that I don’t have. So I’m not gonna relax just yet.

What’s the rarest or most unusual version of the album you own?

Maybe the first UK pressing with the Phillips credit. Some years ago, they discovered that a true first press should have “A Phillips record product“ written under ‘Vertigo’ on the label. Not that many records exist with this credit. The Vertigo label didn’t exactly believe in Sabbath when they released the first record, and I’m sure they didn’t press too many. But when it started to sell, they need more vinyls fast, and the Phillips credit got omitted from the label of the record on the pressings that followed. 

Do you have a specific favourite?

I’ve got two new favourites, actually. One US radio promo in super shape. It cost me €700 last year. And one Japanese red label promo. That one I got for my 60th birthday and it cost around €1200. It’s very, very rare. It’s considered one of the Sabbath holy grails. I feel very fortunate to have it.

Have you got any signed copies of the album?

I never met Black Sabbath before they broke up with Ozzy, so I had to buy a signed copy on ebay. I did it many years ago and it didn’t cost me too much. But it’s beautifully signed and looks great. I do have nicely signed copies of all the Sabbath albums up to [1992’s] Dehumanizer.

Has anybody come up to you after a gig or in the street and given you a copy of Black Sabbath because they knew you collected them?

Not yet, but hopefully some day. I’m not Michael Åkerfeldt from Opeth! He gets unique and expensive records thrown at him for next to nothing when he’s on tour. I’m not in his league. I’ve got more Sabbath than him, but he’s got a massive hard rock/prog collection.

Where do you keep these albums? Are they in display cases?

I have a room in my house full of vinyl. It’s my favourite place on the planet. There’s two big shelves there and a few small ones, plus a bunch of crates on the floor because I don’t have room for all the vinyl I have. So I have to have the rest of the records in the basement and a separate storage unit.

Have you played them all, or are some off limits?

No, I hate that. No white laboratory gloves here! Of course I play all the records – even my first pressings, They do sound a bit better than the later pressings. The first pressing of Master Of Reality that I have sounds fantastic. Massive! Later on they lost some of the warmth in the sound, but nowadays they’re restored to its former glory. I love to put those first pressings on – Sabbath, Rainbow, Heep, Zeppelin. Love them on vinyl, man.

Are you like a wine connoisseur - if you hear a copy of Black Sabbath‘s first album, can you tell which country it was from or what year it’s a reissue from?

Maybe. But it’s difficult. Both the US versions and the German versions sound nearly as good as the UK versions. But the Japanese pressings are easy. They all lack a bit of bass. Maybe bass wasn’t trendy in Japan in the 70s. I can sing the note of which key the next song starts in though, when the current one fades away. Does that count?

You’ve met the members of Black Sabbath over the years. Did you tell them that you collected their first album?

I’ve met all of them, but never mentioned this special ‘interest’ of mine. I met Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler at a hotel in Stockholm when they were doing promo for Dehumanizer and I did mention that I had a big Sabbath collection. I brought some stuff that they signed and were baffled about some of the rarest stuff I had. Geezer signed some bootlegs as well, and laughed about the fact that they get a bit ripped off when people press these unlawful records. He didn’t seem to have a problem with it. He was absolutely great to hang with and had a super sense of humour. Tony was extremely cool too.

Care to share how much you you’ve spent on the albums in total?

I have no idea and I don’t care. People restore cars, buy expensive clothes. I collect records and Sabbath. I bought a big part of my Black Sabbath collection in the late 80s and in the 90s, when vinyl was cheap, so most records I’ve got for not so much money – all the first pressings, promos, bootlegs, singles, posters. When I find something today that I don’t have, it will be expensive. It’s OK – the other records were cheap!

Another thing with my Black Sabbath collection is that the value of it goes up all the time. The prices of Sabbath stuff are insane now. Not very realistic if you ask me. But on the other hand, the cab meter I have installed on my collection is constantly ticking and going up…

What do you family and friends think of you collection?

My wife is a DJ and she’s got nearly as many records as I have, so fortunately she’s in favour of the record madness. We’ve got records pretty much everywhere in the house. I took a shower the other day and had to throw out a bunch of record boxes from the bathroom.

Isn’t it weird to collect so many copies of the same album? You know that other albums are available to buy, right?

Yeah, I do. I have many versions of Paranoid, Vol.4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, etc. I just bought some US first pressings of Vol. 4, Born Again and Heaven And Hell, in even better condition. My Judas Priest, Motörhead, Scorpions, Hawkwind, B.Ö.C., Lizzy and Zeppelin collections are OK too, but not massive.

You recently celebrated your 60th birthday. What are your plans for your collection when you’re gone?

One of my mates asked me the other day what I am gonna do with the collection after I'm dead. The question totally took me off guard and I didn't know what to answer. I wish I could take it with me like the old pharaohs took their treasures with them on their final journey. Imagine being in your coffin totally surrounded by your favourite record. Not bad! That would be heaven to me! But I'm not sure that would be possible.

But my wife saw on the internet that you can send your ashes to a certain place and they'll make a record out of it. Your favourite song pressed with your burned ash! That's so awesome!! I might just do that! I can't take my collection with me when I die, so this is the next best thing, Song? A hint: ‘Please let me die in Solitude‘ [a lyric from Candlemass’s doom classic Solitude]. Or maybe Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath…

Candlemass’s latest album, Sweet Evil Sun, is out now

Formed by ex-Napalm Death singer Lee Dorrian, Cathedral were one of the most influential doom metal bands of the 1990s and 2000s, releasing a string of albums that inspired subsequent generations before their split in 2013. In 2005, Dorrian looked back at the band’s 1991 debut album Forest Of Equilibrium, the record that reinvented the doom scene into the 1990s.

It wasn’t exactly a recipe for success. It’s 1989, and vocalist Lee Dorrian quits Napalm Death as the grind gods are in danger of becoming a cause celebre for trendy mainstream media husks out for a five-minute noise fix. So, what does a man do when he’s cashed in the future? Simple. If you’re Dorrian you start up a doom band too out of sync with the times to ever risk getting lost in the fashion maze.

“I actually wanted to do something more doomy while still in Napalm Death,” recalls the frontman. “In fact, I was keen to introduce slower elements into our music, but the rest of the band wanted to go more death metal.”

Cathedral could have been a very different beast had certain plans happened – plans involving none other than Arch Enemy/Spiritual Beggars guitarist Mike Amott.

“Around Christmas 1988, Mike turned up at my mum’s flat in Coventry. It seems that [Napalm Death drummer] Mick Harris had invited him over to audition for the band without telling me. So, Mike’s on my doorstep, telling me that he was here for the audition, and I’d no clue what he was on about. He ended up staying at my mum’s place, and we did talk about doing a doom side project. It would have been him, me and Napalm Death’s bassist Shane Embury. But nothing came of it. And, when I left, I had no interest in doing another band. I was so disillusioned with the corrupt business side of things. But then, I met Griff.”

‘Griff’ is Mark Griffiths, who worked at the time for Carcass. “He was their lighting guy, and I got to know him through a friend of mine who drove them around. We discovered both of us loved bands like Pentagram and Trouble.”

Dorrian also met Garry ‘Gaz’ Jennings, then guitarist with Brit thrashers Acid Reign, who also shared a passion for this music.

“We got chatting at a show in Leicester, when Acid Reign supported Nuclear Assault – the latter’s bassist Dan Lilker introduced us to each other,” says Dorrian. “Both bands were supposed to go to Europe that night. But Gaz wrote the rest of Acid Reign a letter, resigning!”

Eventually, the trio started to jam, with Griffiths finally moving to bass, as Adam Lehan – who’d replaced Jennings in Acid Reign – coming in on second guitar, and former Sacrilege/Varukers drummer Andy Baker completing the line-up. Not that Baker was there for long, being displaced by Ben Mochrie. The celebrated In Memoriam demo got immediate attention during 1990, and another demo early the following year eventually got them a deal with Earache.

“We had other interest,” says Dorrian. “But the contracts weren’t brilliant. And, while I had my reservations about Earache from Napalm days, I thought, ‘Better the devil you know’.”

By that time Mochrie had left Cathedral – it’s almost as if they had inherited Spinal Tap’s ill fortune with drummers. “None of them ‘exploded’, but they had real problems playing very slowly. They all wanted to speed up, which wasn’t what this band were about,” laughs Dorrian. “I think Andy Baker might have fallen asleep more than once behind the kit! We got hold of an American guy called Mike Smail, who we knew from his work with a favourite band of ours, Dream Death. He came over, and we put him in a B&B while the album was being done.”

With a ‘luxury’ budget of £2,000 (“It was more than twice what Napalm had for the second album, From Enslavement To Obliteration,” recalls Dorrian), Cathedral set up camp at Workshop Studios in Redditch.

“Some friends of mine – a band local to me called Dream Grind – had recorded in that studio, and the facilities were good. We had about two weeks to do the entire album, although the whole band were only there for five days. We had an old engineer friend of mine called Steve Gurney come in to help us out. Did he produce it? As much as Garry or me. All we did was tell everyone to slow down!”

Cathedral had an interesting way of ensuring that their debut album was as dark, melancholy and doomy as possible.

“We got completely out of it as much as we could, which is why my memories of those times are a little hazy,” says Lee. “We were all going through bad times, so we drank and smoked as much as possible, which made our moods even worse. Bad news for our health. Great for the album!”

The band’s efforts were also even helped along by a local policeman.

“There was this copper who kept turning up at the studio. He never seemed to get the hint that we didn’t want him around. We were always telling him to fuck off. But he kept coming back. It turns out that he was the original drummer in a late 80s band called T’Pau. Anyway, he left to join the police force just before they had their breakthrough hit, China In Your Hand, and was pretty pissed off with himself. So, he loved hanging out at the local recording studio. 

“Now, this bloke, knew we were desperate for money, so he said that if we agreed to come down to the police station and be part of an ID parade, then we’d get a tenner each. So, we did it. But he stitched us up a bit, as all we got as a fiver. In those days that was two-and-a-half pints locally. Hardly likely to get us out of it. But every little helped.”

This wasn’t the only time during these sessions that Cathedral had an encounter with the local constabulary. There was also the day that Jennings had his nose broken.

“He and Mike were staying at a B&B the one night Gaz was attacked by the local townies,” says Dorrian. “They probably didn’t like the way he looked, what with his long hair. He was going up to his room, when this guy jumped out and punched him, breaking his nose. 

“When we found out what had happened, we all grabbed hold of something heavy, and were ready to beat the living shit out of these guys. But the hotel locked us in the bar, and called the police. They came down and were actually sympathetic about what had happened to Gaz, but said they couldn’t do anything about it. It seems that smashing someone’s nose doesn’t count as ‘breaking skin’, which is the definition of assault. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, but all that occurred was the guy who did the damage to Gaz was thrown out of the hotel.”

And then there was the run-in with the Jesus Army… all because of some Tibetan monks.

“At the end of the song Serpents Eve, we had some Tibetan monk chants. We thought it’d be a laugh to constantly call up Griff and play this down the phone. It drove him nuts. Eventually, he decided to get his own back. So, he phoned up the Jesus Army, played them a tape of [avante-garde singer] Diamanda Galas, and claimed it was me, and I was possessed by demons, and needed help.  The bastard gave them the studio number. So, they were always calling up to find out how I was. Still, I suppose I deserved it!” 

One of the most striking parts of the Forest Of Equilibrium album was the rather elaborate cover art, the work of one Dave Patchett, who has been associated with Cathedral throughout their career.

“By the time we’d finished recording the album, our influences had stretched out a little beyond just doom. We were also getting into other 70s underground bands – the dark prog ones. Now, their sleeves tended to be a little enigmatic, and I had an idea for the way I wanted ours to look. The album title itself came about when Griff suggested Equilibrium, and I added the idea of a forest, because that was the way my thinking for the cover was going.

“I had no clue whom we could get to do the design, until I walked past a local gallery in Coventry. It’s the sort of place that usually carries the sort of art you wouldn’t bother to look at. But, for once they had some striking stuff in the window. I went in, left my contact details and the next day, Dave contacted me. Within a week, he’d done a rough sketch of the cover, based on my ideas.”

Forest Of Equilibrium was released in October, 1991 to a surprisingly positive response. The album may have gone against the grain of increasingly popular harder, faster music but it certainly struck a chord with aficionados of the underground metal scene, and established a bridgehead for doom right into the new decade.

“The last part of the 1980s was a great time for extreme music because it was so diverse. As a band, we weren’t just listening to Saint Vitus, Trouble and [cult Italian doomster] Paul Chain. They were all big influences on us, as doom fans. But we were also really pleased to get the chance to tour with the likes of The Cranes and The Young Gods. That gave us a very early opportunity to appeal to a different audience. It was a healthy time.

“By the early 90s, things had changed. Everyone seemed wary about being so open-minded, and you had to fit into a specific category. Music got boring. I was amazed that the album had a very good response. We toured with a lot of death metal bands. Names like Carcass, Morbid Angel and Entombed. We got a reaction, though, for better or for worse. We were so slow and they were all playing as fast as they could. We did get their fans yelling out, ‘Play faster!’ But we must have been doing something right, because when supporting Morbid Angel in Manchester, we sold more merchandise than we’ve ever managed since at one show.”

While Forest Of Equilibrium gave Cathedral significant credibility, the line-up didn’t really last long enough to develop any of the promising themes. Smail went back to America soon after Forest Of Equilibrium was released, only to be replaced by yet another former Acid Reign man, Mark Ramsey Wharton. Griffiths was next out, leaving the remaining four to record 1993’s The Ethereal Mirror album and the Statik Majik EP a year later (with Jennings doubling up on bass). But Lehan and Wharton then threw in their towel with Cathedral. So they were able to get out on the road, Cathedral temporarily brought in guitarist Victor Griffin and drummer Joe Hasselvander, from celebrated American doomoids Pentagram. 

By this time the band were evolving. Although their grubby doom aspect would always remain, a more overt nod to the 1970s underground butterflies was beginning to surface. After a brief flirtation with drummer Dave Hornyak and one-time Repulsion bassist Scott Carlson, in 1995 they brought in Leo Smee and Brian Dixon on bass and drums, respectively. This line-up appeared on every Cathedral album from 1995’s Carnival Bizarre (featuring a guest appearance from Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi) to 2010’s The Guessing Game, with Scott Carlson returning to replace Smee for 2013’s swansong album, The Last Spire .

Forest Of Equilibrium itself has stood the test of time as the premier doom experience. While Dorrian himself might be loathe to admit it, it remains one most important genre releases ever, bringing the harrowing style back into focus, and introducing a new generation to the charms of rhythmic sloth.

“We’ve tried a few different things over the years. Some have worked, others haven’t,” says Dorrian. “But that first album laid the foundations for our style, one we’ve stuck with ever since. What is it? Cathedral music. Just that!”

The original version of this feature was published in Metal Hammer issue 157

Anyone who’s ever said the phrase “It’s not all doom and gloom” is not welcome here. For almost as long as heavy music has existed, doom metal has been sulking in the background, never enjoying massive mainstream success but routinely giving fans sullen masterpieces. Its roots trace all the way back to Black Sabbath in the 1960s, before the subgenre truly hit its stride almost 20 years later.

With doom metal having such a rich landscape of dark, horrible things, it can be hard to know where to dive in. Hopefully this will help. Below, Metal Hammer’s listed just five must-hear albums that sum up the history of metal’s saddest style.

Saint Vitus – Saint Vitus (1984)

As the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal gained traction, it inspired an international subsect of bands blending the bombast and pageantry of this fresh sound with the sluggish pace of Sabbath. Trouble, Cirith Ungol and The Obsessed all count among this mini-movement, and Saint Vitus’ self-titled debut is one of its most enduring albums. Casting Scott Reagers’ wailing vocals against the filthy-as-a-quagmire guitar tone of Dave Chandler, it was a bridge between past and present that helped formulate the doom metal code.

Candlemass – Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (1986)

Similar to Metallica and Napalm Death, Candlemass didn’t invent doom metal with their debut album, but they definitely built a measuring stick against which every future genre band would get compared. Epicus Doomicus Metallicus lives up to that Pig Latin title, providing grandeur and gloom in equal measure. There’s also many a sorrowful segue, thanks to those moments of acoustic guitar. From Pallbearer to Fvneral Fvkk, you can still hear new bands inspired by what these Swedes did 35 years ago.

Paradise Lost – Icon (1993)

Most bands go down in history for pioneering one genre. Paradise Lost pioneered two. In the early ’90s, the Northern nihilists co-wrote the parameters for death/doom with the rest of the “Peaceville three” (My Dying Bride and Anathema) by making death metal slow and sad. Then their fourth album announced a new creative vision of sounding like Sisters Of Mercy but heavier. In its downtrodden majesty, Icon was coined “gothic metal”: a tag later co-opted by Evanescence, Him and a host of millennial darlings.

Electric Wizard – Dopethrone (2000)

“Stoner doom” blew up in the 1990s thanks to Sleep and Kyuss, and Electric Wizard were a distinctly British answer to that largely American scene. On their magnum opus Dopethrone, the Dorset heavies dragged “new” doom more in line with the traditional ways of Sabbath. Weed-stenched riffs like the opening of Funeralopolis feel like they came straight from the fretboard of Tony Iommi himself, while Jus Oborn’s vocals sound as distanced and muddied as Ozzy Osbourne’s in his heyday.

Chelsea Wolfe – Hiss Spun (2017)

In the 2010s – thanks to the ingenuity of Pallbearer, Khemmis, Primitive Man and more – doom metal enjoyed a comeback across the United States. All of these revivalists had interesting things to say, but few surprised like Chelsea Wolfe did in 2017. The Californian singer/songwriter isn’t exclusively a metal musician – and that’s what makes the heavy-as-fuck Hiss Spun feel so fresh. It starkly contrasts the fuzziest, gnarliest riffing against her high-pitched goth rock crooning, with the tones being smoothly balanced by producer and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou.

When Pagan Altar released their self-titled demo in 1982, it wasn’t just their music that intrigued the few people who were paying attention. “Pagan Altar are actual practicing Satanists,” declared US zine Whiplash when reviewing Pagan Altar – the mysterious London quartet’s first appearance in the international metal press, and one of the last for many years.

As with several other bands in the early 80s, the devoutness of Pagan Altar’s diabolism may have been somewhat sensationalised, but on the subject of their shadowy, mystical, Sabbath-school proto-doom metal, Whiplash’s spot-on assessment still stands up: “The band does produce a strange feeling of dread in their music... These guys sound like they really want your soul!”

Pagan Altar are one of the greatest, if most enigmatic doom bands the metal scene has ever produced. But where the likes of Pentagram, Trouble, St Vitus and Candlemass have been rightly celebrated for the contribution to doom, Pagan Altar have never received the widespread credit they’re due.

They were the brainchild of vocalist Terry Jones and his guitarist son Alan, who started the band in 1978 (though the familial connection was initially kept vague). The two spent five years refining their musical vision, amassing a wealth of unreleased demo material at their own Pagan Studios facility in Brockley, South London.

According to band lore this Victorian building was built on a crossroads where witches were burnt, and teemed with ghostly activity. One early bassist was found sitting pale and petrified in the corner murmuring “I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it,” insisting that a woman in black had drifted across the studio before dropping through the floor. Little wonder Terry and Alan had to work around a continuously revolving door of rhythm sections.

The Pagan Altar demo contained 40 minutes of hard-hitting occultic heavy metal drenched in gothic folk-horror atmospherics, presenting a far spookier prospect than their nearest contemporaries on the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal circuit. Witchfinder General sang about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in between dabbling with diabolism, but Pagan Altar deployed only the most oppressively dark themes.

To bring this atmosphere to life, the band’s ambitiously elaborate stage show was based on a Satanic church theme, with an altar draped in velvet, human skulls burning incense, inverted crosses, black candles, a coffin belching dry ice, bandmates processing onstage in hooded black robes, Satanic invocations and explosive pyrotechnics. 

Yet record companies weren’t biting. By 1983 the NWOBHM bubble had burst. Occult imagery was increasingly unfashionable, while the latest metallic trends - glam and thrash - were worlds away from Pagan Altar’s “slow paced brain picking metal in the early 70s tradition” (another spot-on appraisal from Whiplash zine).

Overlooked and left behind, Pagan Altar gave up the ghost sometime in 1986. Once again, their timing wasn’t great; Candlemass soon released the landmark Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, effectively kickstarting the doom genre in earnest. A freakishly cult micro-scene slowly mushroomed into a flourishing global movement, while Pagan Altar’s visionary stack of old tapes kept gathering dust.

When a bootlegger pressed the 1982 demo to vinyl, Terry and Alan resolved to remaster and release the recordings via their own Oracle Records imprint. Finally the world was ready for Pagan Altar; the CD had an inspirational impact on a new generation of doomhounds, excited to uncover this astonishing missing link in doom history. Consequently, in 2004 Pagan Altar reformed and released two excellent collections of rerecorded archive material, Lords Of Hypocrisy and Magical & Mythical, showcasing the timeless charm of Terry’s declamatory nasal storytelling and Alan’s effusive guitar heroism. Work on a fourth album was shelved when results fell short of the Joneses’ expectations, but tragically, with the recordings in limbo, in 2015 Terry died of cancer.

Resolving to honour his dad’s legacy, Alan rerecorded the material and released The Room Of Shadows in 2017. A concert to launch its release, with American singer Brendon Radigan, was intended as a celebratory endpoint, but the band continue playing, slowly piecing together a new LP. Appropriately, like the witch’s ghost in their old studio, Pagan Altar refuses to die.

Just nine months after the release of their debut record, Noeth Ac Anoeth, experimental Welsh doom outfit Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard (yes, really!) are back with its follow-up. The six extraordinary and experimental tracks of Y Proffwyd Dwyll – which translates as ‘The False Prophet’ – demonstrate both the overarching musical ambition and the drive and determination of this Wrexham-based four-piece. That’s partly a result of their long-standing history – although the band have only been together a couple of years, founding members Paul Davies (guitar) and James ‘Carrat’ Carrington (drums) go back much further.

“We didn’t really plan any kind of career path,” says guitarist Paul Davies. “I’ve been playing with Carrat for about 10 years. Even when we weren’t in this band, we were still playing and writing, and we just decided to do something really heavy one day. Through trials and tribulations, some hassle, some arguments, some swearing, some small fights, we sat in the practice room and came up with something we think is pretty cool.”

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That something was the half hour track Nachthexen, which would later become the centre of Noeth Ac Anoeth, a gripping, epic song of twists and turns that saw the band – completed by bassist/vocalist Jessica Ball and guitarist Wez Leon – played with the idea of what doom is, pushing and prodding its boundaries by steadfastly following its own path.

“A lot of doom – no disrespect to a lot of modern doom bands – kind of sounds the same,” Davies says. “But we’ve had this idea in mind for a long time of what we wanted to do, and it’s a vision that’s fallen into this thing where people say it’s doom, which is cool, but it’s also as much about bringing together all the different influences that we enjoy than trying to adhere to the doom vibe.”

That’s something that actually got the band a lot of exposure, and which they’ve focussed on even more with this new record. Incredibly catchy and melodic in some places, dark and impenetrable in others, it sees them feed off that attention in the most positive way, infusing their songs with melodic flourishes, uplifting vocals and nuanced classical leanings. Of course, doom is never going to be the most profitable of genres, but the response to their unique vision suggests it could actually become sustainable if they keep doing it and just stay true to their original intentions.

“We weren’t expecting anything to come of that Nachthexen when we wrote it,” says Carrat, “but the shock of getting all that attention from it has compelled us to really think about taking it somewhere.”

“Doom is quite a small part of the heavy metal genre,” adds Davies, “so we’re definitely not crusaders, but at the same time we want to see how far we can take it and get doom-y music recognised with a larger audience.”

That’s already started happening to the band more than they ever thought it would. Mostly, that’s because of the actual music they make, but they are also aware that people are drawn to their rather cumbersome, ridiculous name.

“A lot of people have got a lot of opinions on our name,” chuckles Davies. “We did really want to come up with a huge name. We never planned to have any music released or have any kind of career, so we just thought, ‘Let’s have a huge name!’ And whether you love the name or hate the name, it’s us. We couldn’t do this music and have a small-time name. A lot of people have been turned off by it, but at the end of the day, the music is about us and what we want to do, so we don’t really care. It’s the name we chose, so if you’re on board, good. And if you’re not, there’s loads of other bands with cool names and less words, so go listen to them.”

Y Proffwyd Dwyll is out September 30, via New Heavy Sounds.

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