Cathedral – Islington Academy 2006

artist website

venue

impulse buy

By the time Cathedral were due on stage they already had a terrible venue (small and flat with zero view from anywhere beyond the first five rows of people and the capacity of a car glove box) and a worse main-support band to contend with.

The fantastic Grand Magus had been on and off in the blink of an eye at the start of the evening and were consequently missed by most people (seriously, why even both making the trip from Sweden to play a paltry fifteen minutes each night?) and Electric Wizard were the sloppiest, most boring band I think I’ve ever seen. Legends of the genre they may be, but they just went on, and on, and on with little to no variation in music for 45 minutes and even less singing to break up the monotony. Appalling.

So, with all these problems in their way, Cathedral faced, for my money at least, a far more difficult task than their last headlining London show where they had the prospect of playing their new 25-minutes epic The Garden live for the first time. But, as most fans are well aware, Cathedral are unstoppable.

Mixing perfectly songs they’ve already been playing since new album The Garden of Unearthly Delights was released and songs not played for many, many years the band stormed through an 85-minute set with much more passion than last time, seeming far happier than when the nerves of playing The Garden struck.

The classics Ride and Hopkins (Witchfinder General) were held over from the last tour, with excellent new songs Tree of Life & Death, Corpsecycle and Upon Azrael’s Wings remaining in the set, proving beyond doubt the quality of the new album. They were joined this time around by North Berwick Witch Trials, another of the top new songs. However, the highlights lay in the older songs. Not necessarily because they’re better than the new ones, but because they sound so fresh, having not been played for such a long time (this is the fourth show in London since September, so pretty much every fan in the south of the country has likely witnessed some of the new songs live recently).

Vampire Sun, good song that it is, didn’t work that well as an opener for the same reason Ride didn’t when they opened for Within Temptation at the Astoria back in September. It’s not a straight-forward enough song. A set opener needs to be an instant kind of song, with obvious choruses etc. Grim Luxuria and Commiserating The Celebration were welcome additions later, but it was the mid-set brace of Autumn Twilight and Night of The Seagulls that really stole the show. Something from The VIIth Coming would have been good (Skullflower was included in October at The Underworld), but there’s not the time for everything.

Cathedral once again showed why they are the foremost doom metal band in the World. They don’t play slow, sloppy riffs from start to finish, they vary things, they have an arsenal of riffs and rhythms as big as Black Sabbath‘s and every bit as good, Gaz Jennings has blistering solos to burn and Lee Dorrian is simply a legend. With the changing of setlists every time they come back I could happily watch them every couple of months for a long time to come without ever seeing the same set of songs twice or getting bored. They don’t make bands like this anymore.

“ unstoppable ”

Setlist: Vampire Sun / Tree of Life & Death / Soul Sacrifice / North Berwick Witch Trials / Grim Luxuria / Commiserating The Celebration / Autumn Twilight / Night of The Seagulls / Corpsecycle / Upon Azrael’s Wings / Ride // Hopkins (Witchfinder General)

Written by Andy Lye
More: Doom Metal, Gigs, Cathedral