It’s been an epic wait since we took a trip through ‘The Garden Of Unearthly Delights,’ so there is only really one way to follow it up by Cathedral and that’s with another epic album. Five years is a long time between discs especially when you haven’t exactly been reminding your audience who you are with strings of live shows, something that Cathedral never particularly shied away from in the past. There have not been a huge amount of these recently though; in fact last I remember was Damnation festival two years ago where they previewed a song from this album, which they obviously decided not to include. Still live dates are just about to be announced and the group have a wonderful new album to serenade us with. ‘The Guessing Game’ is it would seem going to be too big for a single disc and will stretch onto two, it has a huge amount of ideas both from the present and the past as well as the usual excellent cover art from Dave Patchett, which I am sure will be even more impressive when you have the proper product in tour hand (I have only seen the front cover digitally).
Short instrumental ‘Immaculate Misconception’ immediately reminds me of Goblin with blazing organ work, the glove clad killer poises to strike and then a splash of acid induced prog makes it all go weird. The two styles work great together and culminate with a crying baby. No idea about that or the few rather strange samples that occasionally crop up reminding of children’s TV programmes of yesteryear presented by strange individuals with pipes and patched elbows on their cardigans. Brian Dixon swipes all that away with hefty drumming on ‘Funeral of Dreams.’ The bombast again gives way as Lee Dorrian’s vocals give way to spoken word parts that are pure Gong and literally tripped out lyrically. A flash of Beatles etched Summer Of Love chorus and we are back into the heavier parts. It’s all enough to stew your head and if you listen to this like a potheaded pixie no doubt it will do just that. Garry Jennings and Leo Smee keep the ballast heavy on numbers like ‘Painting In The Dark’ which has a happy go lucky melody about it and if it were not so damn heavy has a chorus that could well be another 60s’ sounding hippy epic. The rhythm and bluesy melody of ‘Death of an Anarchist’ is one of the albums many moments that strikes me as totally familiar, it has a classic line running through it that should get you on the first listen and to coin a very, very bad pun, I’m sure this is no accident! The title track is a nice instrumental and one central jingle reminds of the theme music from Grange Hill, err that’ll be the drugs again?
Over on what is going to be disc 2 we have the upbeat, fast and frantic urgency of ‘Casket Chasers.’ They could have called this one Dawn Of The Soon To be Dead and this one is full tilt boogie all the way down to the grave and bound to be a highlight live. One of the numbers I was really looking forward to, probably more than anything else was the 3rd part of the Amando de Ossorio inspired Blind Dead song cycle ‘La Noche del Buque Maldito (aka Ghost Ship of the Blind Dead).’ After a gloomy cobweb infested start it is one hell of a bouncy and bumpy ride turning into a cartoon of itself as the Ghostly Galleon piles up a huge wave and plummets down, bones landing in a heap and randomly building up into a skeleton again. I love this one and if forced to choose, it could well be my favourite of the album. Staying on a horror trip we have ‘The Running Man’ which does not quite so much remind of the short story but melody wise the main theme from Suspiria in a doomed down format, when you get the chance to listen see if you agree? Oh and Lee sings about Garden Gnomes too so it’s kind of a perfect number. After the albums longest and most downbeat number ‘Requiem for the Voiceless’ we finish on the much happier ‘Journeys into Jade.’ Best way to describe this is a band discography put into a song as Lee takes us all on a trip back to albums past and hints towards the future.
Despite the length and scope of the album ‘The Guessing Game’ does not outstay its welcome and is quite a comfortable listen in one hit. I have given it plenty of spins already and it’s going to get plenty more although digitally its days are pretty much numbered as I too will be waiting to buy this one as well as looking forward to those live shows. I have seen many people listing their most anticipated albums of 2010 and Cathedral rate highly on most of them, somehow I do not think there are going to be many disappointed when they hear this and it’s great to have the British institutaion back after their well earned break.
http://www.myspace.com/cathedral
