Soul Sacrifice/Statik Majik

This CD includes Cathedral's second and third EPs, 1992's Soul Sacrifice and 1994's Statik Majik. Black Sabbath-inspired riffs, solid musicianship, and good production make for a pretty good listen. These recordings have all the trappings of "classic" doom metal, with some more "modern" touches. Swirling keyboards, guitars, and a solid rhythm section make up a really well-produced and interesting musical base. Occasionally though, the attempts at "retro" soundscapes are so over the top it seems almost like a joke. Handclaps and Fu Manchu-styled staccato spoken vocals on "Midnight Mountain" from Statik Majik, or the atonal intro to "The Voyage of the Homeless Sapien," complete with flute and bird sounds (from the same EP), are goofy enough to seem like self-mockery. They're not, though. Cathedral is serious about wizards and dragons, and the approach taken to creating music with mystical themes is serious in playing, production, and presentation. While the performance and production are far better than previous Cathedral material, listening to Soul Sacrifice gets pretty distracting because of a decision to double all the vocal tracks when recording. The end result is hearing the same guy sing along with himself, never exactly matching his own vocal. This production choice comes across sounding pretty goofy, and reduces the stand-alone overall strength of the music. Aside from some silly parts here and there, these EPs are both musically solid and feature great riffs inspired not only by Sabbath, but also by "classic" doom standouts Candlemass, Saint Vitus, and Trouble, as well as contemporaries Fu Manchu and Sleep. In fact, the impression at times that Cathedral basically took a bunch of riff ideas from each of these bands and put them together in new ways is likely no accident. But, as Monster Magnet's Dave Wyndorf says on Spine of God, "We ain't no pioneers, we just sort what we like from what's already there." This wouldn't be the first Cathedral CD to recommend, but it is good stuff, and it's always great when bands re-release hard-to-find material like this. ~ Paul Kott|