CATHEDRAL JAPAN

This is gonna be a shorter post as this one is for posterity really! Cathedral are a band that should need little introduction Featuring Lee Dorrian (Owner of Rise Above Records and who, at the time Just freshly vacated the vocal spot in Napalm Death) as well as ex- members of UK thrashers Acid Reign These guys set out to make the heavisest and darkest doom metal they could possibly manage heavily influenced by the early Doom bands like Pentagram, Trouble, Saint Vitus and of course Black Sabbath. Cathedral took that mournful sound to the next level! Time for a space filling anecdote....

I had known Lee from his time in Napalm Death and I hadn't seen him since he had left ND. However he had come on tour as "chaperone" to Japanese Hardcore band S.O.B. as they did not really speak English and had never been to the UK before. I caught up with him in Edinburgh and as we were chatting he told me about his new band Cathedral (I'm almost positive original Cathedral bassist Griff was with him but memory is hazy) and from his pocket he pulled the now legendary "In Memoriam" Demo tape which had just been recorded and not yet released....


                                   

Lee said if i could get the sound man to play it over the PA so we could hear it good and loud (The band had not played live yet and wanted to know how they sounded over a venue system) then I could have the tape to keep! So I asked, the sound man obliged and I got to hear the first Cathedral demo pre-release at top volume over a venue PA system! I was blown away this was an era when bands were trying to "out-heavy" each other all the time down tuning guitars heavier gauge strings etc. But i had never heard a guitar tone so low or music so slow it was ridiculous but mind blowing! This was heaviness on a near subsonic level!

Over a career of near 25 years 10 albums and a brace of EP's Cathedral were a very progressive band going from the slow crawling funeral doom of early albums to integrating funkier and more prog rock and psychedelic influences even being given the tag "disco doom" at one point! There's so much stuff and it's easily available elsewhere so I would not even try to give you a discography it'd take forever to upload, however, I put a little something together for myself a few years ago and I mentioned it on social media and a few friends of mine begged for a copy so I uploaded it to mediafire for them and decided at some point i would share it here! I have no idea how long ago that was but here we are now...

You may not be aware that when albums are released in Japan the domestic price of a CD is far more expensive than the cost of an imported version from the West so how would the Japanese music business even begin to compete with that? (You'd think lowering prices would be the obvious answer) Well the normal practice is that the Japanese domestic release of a bands CD normally comes with a bonus track or in some cases whole bonus discs or DVD's.The problem is that this extra stuff MUST remain exclusive to the Japanese market and cannot be released in the West. I for one think this is a fucking travesty have you ever tried to look for Japanese Imports with bonus content ? You are looking at 3 or 4 times the price of the released version, sometimes it's worth it but other times you're looking at paying £30 for a single CD that has one short bonus track! So back to Cathedral over the course of their career they have amassed 10 tracks and an hours worth of Japanese bonus tracks! I of course think it's ridiculous as stated above the price of imported Japanese CD's is ludicrous both in Japan and the rest of the world so here I have compiled them in chronological order and even made a custom cover. So now you rabid Cathedral fans can add this to your collection! ENJOY!

CATHEDRAL JAPAN - Mediafire