The Carnival Bizarre - Cathedral

By the advent of their third full-length album, Cathedral had finally settled on their familiar sound and produced the defining album of their career, as well as one of the classic works of doom metal. Abandoning those pretensions to depressive melancholia that had never proved quite as successful as their contemporaries (and was more often dull than anything), the band here tends to focus on the fun side of sludgy stoner rock, their obvious Black Sabbath worship culminating in a satisfying guest appearance from Tony Iommi in 'Utopian Blaster.' This upbeat direction is most evident in the first three songs, which trump pretty much anything produced in the ...  Read the complete review

Carnival Bizarre is Cathedrals’ first attempt really at an album which combines both the deathly slow doom riffs of the first two Cathedral lp's, and some faster, still heavy but perhaps more energetic tracks. And it’s also probably the album, which they’ll be most remembered for. Not that we’re talking top 40 charting exactly here! But Hopkins Witchfinder is what anyone not into Cathedral would know, and it’s the 2nd track on Carnival.. So to the tunes; Vampire Sun starts, I first heard this on an Earache label compilation, and got into Lee Dorian’s Sabbath worshipping doomers from this. It’s a straightforward ...  Read the complete review