Cathedral
The Guessing Game
Nuclear Blast

Twenty years of caravans and carnivals, funeral marches and phantasmagoria, witches and whores. Twenty years of shaping the pagan metal landscape with heavy grooves and medieval riffs. Twenty years of Lee Dorrian’s high mass madness and apothecary anarchy. Twenty years of Cathedral. Twenty years of DOOM.

Ok, I’m not here to tell you whether or not Cathedral’s first ever double album, The Guessing Game, is good or not. We are well beyond those kinds of formalities. As members of an illustrious, iconic group of doom metal pioneers that includes Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Candlemass, Trouble, and Electric Wizard, Cathedral have earned your undying devotion, your unfaltering allegiance, and the benefit of the doubt over the years (not that they’ve ever needed it). I will tell you, however, that The Guessing Game’s stylistic blueprint is gloriously eclectic; Cathedral flexes its signature, thick, Stonehenge sized guitar muscles on songs like “Edwige’s Eyes” and “Casket Chasers” but the progressive, psychedelic demeanor of songs like “Funeral of Dreams” and “Cats, Incense, Candles and Wine” hearkens back to the days of Vanilla Fudge, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, and King Crimson. Of course, you’ve also got the classic dope n’ roll of “Requiem for the Voiceless,” which crawls on all bony fours like a hungry prisoner to a plate of cold gruel. So, is it good? You already know the answer to that, my friend. But if you must really know, it’s unruly and evil, and sounds like twenty years of doom has finally taken its rightful toll.

Check out this video teaser for The Guessing Game!

Black Wizard
Black Wizard
Self-released

Ok, so I’m not sure this album is entirely new, but it’s new to me, and as you’re reading this the young Canucks in Black Wizard are putting the finishing touches on the vinyl version, so that’ll be new, got it? And by finishing touches I mean they are silk screening every single goddamn record jacket. That’s instant cred right there, and not just because I have a raging boner for all things rock n’ roll and all things silk screen, but because there’s no doubt that during this awesomely messy DIY process one of ‘em will get ripped to the tits on cheap beer, lose a finger tip in a freak silk screening accident, and bleed all over the freshly painted jackets. I would kill a child with a shoe to get my hands on one of those soiled copies, let me tell you.

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Obiat
Eye Tree Pi
Small Stone

Obiat comes at you from England by way of Poland and is at once Mastodonian, Katatonian, and Wagnerian (as in Eric, as in Trouble) in all it does, and yet stand well on their own out on the furthest branches of the tallest tree on the highest mountain in your mind. Where Candlemass built shrines, Obiat builds satellites; both speak the same ancient language, but exist in a different space and time. Eye Tree Pi, the band’s third album, is some serious psychedelic doom, a heavy mathematical formula where cosmic dynamite fury plus mystic pagan heresy equals wicked acid flashbacks of aliens building Stonehenge under stormy red skies. So put on your silver jumpsuit, spaceman, and take shelter in the forest of all time.

Listen to “NoMad NoMind” from Eye Tree Pi.

Buy Eye Tree Pi from Small Stone.