Cathedral - Endtyme (2001)

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Cathedral - Endtyme (2001)

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It should be noted at the beginning that doom of this sort is, by its very nature, drenched in Sabbath, so those requiring a full revelation should accept their loss and move on. Endtyme’s brilliance comes not by way of new design, but the revival of spirit that moves this album: it’s entirely Sabbath-esque, in terms of scope and quality as well as sound. More rooted in midlife Sab than the birth pangs of the first album or Paranoid, Endtyme mixes more conventional heavy rock songs (“Melancholy Emperor”, “Whores to Oblivion”, “Sea Serpent”) with lengthy experimental epics (“Ultra Earth” and the jarring “Templar’s Arise! (The Return)”), all driven by an fantastic/apocalyptic tone that makes the Cathedral of 2001 more authentic than a thousand fuzzbox bands. The songwriting here is superb, offering a deep understanding of the abysses Sabbath was probing, so much so that, given shriller vocals, Endtyme emerges as the Sab album that should have followed Technical Ecstacy and sparked a second (or third) golden age of doom. That’s not to say that Lee Dorrian’s vocals here are unsuccessful-while I admit that I wasn’t initially thrilled with his sound (and I haven’t liked his vocals since Forest of Equilibrium, anyway), the vocals on Endtyme do grow on you with repeated plays until you begin to see Dorrian as a critical element of the album’s quality. Dorrian’s vocal approach is still midway between clean and death, but it works much better on a sludgy album like this than on the more groove-dominated Ethereal Mirror. By far the most important element here is the storming, godlike guitar sound, a an absolutely monstrous tone that weaves devastation when unleashed in the more rocking songs-Billy Anderson should be knighted for his production job, as the guitar is the apex upon which albums like this rise or fall and its sound is perfect here. Even songs that aren’t guitar-based, like the trippy “Astral Queen”, sound great, though, both in sound and execution, and the album is put together with such great highs and lows that every blast of guitar is fully felt, never lingering long enough to inure the listener to its power. Endtyme, it can only be hoped, will mark the beginning of a long run of black genius for this band…it’s not an album that matches, say, Sabotage in terms of inventiveness or influence, but it probably ties it for acquaintance with the End. Definitely worth your dollar.

~ by GodlessDolphin, www.metal-archives.com