Review by Jason Guest
With the announcement that Cathedral was calling it quits, why no one breathed a sigh of relief is beyond me. Imagine Cathedral banging out ‘Hopkins (The Witchfinder General)’ in their dotage, struggling to entertain an indifferent crowd unaware of their significance. Embarrassing, yes? If that was to be the case then good fucking riddance. All we can hope is that someday down the line Cathedral doesn’t re-form, release a piss-poor album and follow it up with a run of washout shows.
As if to wrap it up neatly, like Ouroboros Cathedral have come full circle to swallow their own tail, the album being resplendent in the dark atmospherics and Sabbath-worshipping, crushing doom that their name has long been synonymous with since their inception. This is Cathedral being Cathedral. The pressures off, they can do what they want. Though some of the songs tend to labour too long, while many a ten-ton riff comes lurching over the horizon, with such touches as the acoustic guitar in ‘Infestation Of Grey Death’ and the violin, chilling organ and a curious synth section in ‘An Observation’, Cathedral draw deeply from the well their doom-laden swansong. The Last Spire is Cathedral at their best; that is to say, at their definition of their best, no one else’s, and closes the book on the band in fine form and leave a gaping hole in the metal scene. Still, ex-Rage Against The Machine drummer Brad Wilk’s new band with ex-members of Heaven and Hell and Black Label Society sounds pretty good…
8 out of 10
Track listing:
- Entrance To Hell
- Pallbearer
- Cathedral Of The Damned
- Tower Of Silence
- Infestation Of Grey Death
- An Observation
- The Last Laugh
- This Body, Thy Tomb
