Review of Anniversary by Cathedral

Disc One Back to the Forest (Forest of Equilibrium)

1. Picture of Beauty and Innocence

2. Comiserating the Celebration (of Life)

3. Ebony Tears

4. Serpent Even

5. Soul Sacrifice

6. A Funeral Request

7. Equilibrium

8. Reaching Happiness, Touching Pain

Disc Two – set two: Freak Winter

1. Funeral of Dreams

2. Enter the Worms

3. Upon Azrael’s Wings

4. Midnight Mountain

5. Cosmic Funeral

6. Carnival Bizarre

7. Night of the Seagulls

8. Corpsecycle

9. Ride

10. The Last Spire pt. 1 (Entrance)

11. Vampire Sun

12. Hopkins (Witchfinder General)

Cathedral’s album Anniversary is a must have for lovers of the band. It is their first and only live album the band has released. To celebrate their twentieth anniversary they played an epic concert in London at the Islington Academy. For this one time only event, the original line-up performed their debut album Forest of Equilibrium in full. On the second disc the line-up with the longest run together, Lee Dorrian, Garry Jennings, Brian Dixon, and Leo Smee, performed a set of all the loudest and dirtiest songs, new and old.

This is my first time listening to Cathedral and they blew me away. They bring a great rendition of their album Forest of Equilibrium, which would have been a blast to see as it was the original members. The whole album, both discs, bring a very well performed two set epic event. It has the doom metal performed by those who created it and also has the stoner metal from the line up who stayed together the longest. Lee Dorrian is an amazing vocalist and brings a dark, yet mellow, style to the table. While Garry Jennings brings slow and dirty riffs but can also showcase awesome solos as well. I don’t want to leave Brian Dixon and Leo Smee out either, they also performed just as well! Overall, this album is incredible with the two epic line ups as well as the sets that they played. I would recommend this album to any Cathedral fan, since this is the only live album released and it would be fantastic to own. I would also like to remind you that Cathedral has called it quits but are doing so while releasing one more album in 2012 called The Last Spire. So who knows if they will do one more tour for that album or not, but they have officially called it quits.