CATHEDRAL — The Garden of Unearthly Delights (review)

CATHEDRAL — The Garden of Unearthly Delights album cover Album · 2005 · Stoner Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
UMUR
"The Garden of Unearthly Delights" is the 8th full-length studio album by UK doom metal act Cathedral. The album was released through Nuclear Blast Records in September 2005. It´s the successor to "The VIIth Coming" from 2002. "The Garden of Unearthly Delights" features among other tracks, the 26:58 minutes long "The Garden". Cathedral have previously composed very long tracks (especially the 22:42 minutes long "The Voyage of the Homeless Sapien" from the 1994 "Statik Majik " EP comes to mind), but this one takes the prize as the longest track in their discography.

While it´s impossible to talk about "The Garden of Unearthly Delights" and not mention "The Garden" (which is a multi-suite track featuring many different sections and atmospheres), the album actually features 9 other tracks (and a total playing time of 70 minutes), and the remaining tracks on the album are also more than worthy of being mentioned. I could have done without the 5:58 minutes long closing track "Proga-Europa", which opens with 5 minutes of silence before closing with 1 minute of music, but other than that track, "The Garden of Unearthly Delights" features many powerful, heavy, and intriguing doom/stoner metal tracks. "North Berwick Witch Trials" is a personal favorite (damn that is a great track), but tracks like "Upon Azrael's Wings" and "Corpsecycle" are also among the highlights.

"The Garden of Unearthly Delights" features a heavy, powerful, and organic sounding production, which suits the material perfectly. Cathedral are as always a well playing act, pumping out brick heavy riffs and rhythms, but also more querky, psychedelic, and even progressive moments. Lee Dorrian´s voice and vocal style is a bit of an aquired taste, but to my ears his performance on "The Garden of Unearthly Delights" is among his finest moments. While there is a silly psychedelic tinged vocal part here and there, he predominantly sounds delightfully gruff and even a little angry too, which suits the dark and heavy parts of the material perfectly. The album features some female clean vocals too, courtesy of Lo Polidoro, and the female vocals compliment Dorrian´s vocals well.

To my ears Cathedral´s discography is a bit uneven in quality. There are both some incredibly great albums but also quite a few more standard quality releases. "The Garden of Unearthly Delights" definitely belongs in the former catagory, and sits well along side "classic" Cathedral albums like "Forest of Equilibrium (1991)" and "The Ethereal Mirror (1993)". It´s raw and heavy, but also both melodic and psychedelic/progressive and it is through and through an intriguing release. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.
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