When I think back to '91, one thing immediately leaps to my mind – Cathedral. This was the year that the UK-based doomsters first got under my, then green, skin. Their debut full-length, Forest Of Equilibrium, was the contagion. It was an infection that lasted many, many years, through each and every release of their incredibly storied quarter century of existence. When looking back, it's quite clear now that Cathedral were a bizzare and wholly-different beast within the realm of extreme metal – especially in those very early 'Earache Years' (as I like to refer to that epoch). For the denizens of 90s-era death metal fans, their Sabbath-meets-Entombed sound was a fresh and compelling listen.
With the demise of Cathedral back in 2013, we were left with a void – one not so easily filled. Apart from a handful of releases, which includes the fine return-to-form that is the last couple of Paradise Lost albums, doom has become a bit predicatable – with '70s sentimentality being the rule of the day.
Well, fret not, as ex-Catherdal mainman, Lee Dorrian, is back – and he is once again armed with a brutally familiar take on doom with his current project, With The Dead. With the impending release of their sophomore effort, entitled Love From With The Dead, I asked Lee if there was a concerted effort to re-establish that sound of yesteryear – a fight to inject something old/new into the current doom metal clime?
"I kind of tired of all the copycat bands using copy and paste 'occult imagery' and regurgitating the same old second-rate Sleep, Pentagram and Kyuss type riffs, not that I have anything against those bands," clarifies Lee. "In the 90s it was all about space and getting stoned and later it became all about witches and the devil or stealing song titles from obscure horror movies. I find it all rather lazy and tired by now, to be honest. It was great for a brief time but, to me, it just shows a lack of honesty when the same old imagery and subject matters are lazily repeated over and over and over again, without any individual thought or imagination. In With The Dead, we just wanted to put more of ourselves into what we do, as opposed to relying purely on second hand imagery."
This thing is brutal. Perhaps the most inhuman thing Lee has undertaken (apart from the early Napalm Death years, of course). With age obviously not a factor – as it relates to creating savage slabs of sludge – I asked Lee if Love From With The Dead was an exercise at channeling his inner brutality? Are his tastes becoming more extreme with the greying of temples?
"To be honest, I don't really listen to any modern extreme metal music at all," reveals the frontman. "Most music I listen to these days is from around fifty years ago, which in itself could be considered extreme in the opposite direction, I don’t know. With The Dead is the band we are in and it’s a doom band, so playing the way we do is something that's in our blood and it's what comes from the desire to be the heaviest band we can possibly be, based on personal experiences and the state of the world we live in. It's not to say that we would do something outside of WTD which was less 'brutal' or more musical, it's just that WTD is the perfect platform to channel all our frustrations."
Along with being a brutal ear-fucking, this thing is crepusculary bleak. Not an ounce of light escapes. I would venture to say that this is probably the darkest we have ever heard Lee Dorrian. Shit like this comes from some deep, dark place. Are we hearing the remnants of some soul destroying experiences?
"Well, on a personal level, these past couple of years haven't been the best in many ways," declares Dorrian. "When you go through heavy experiences, I think it's important to find a way of making something positive out of them, as well as facing up to them. Making heavy music is not just about tone and tempo, it can also be a way of expressing those emotions and experiences that we all go through. We wanted this album to be heavier than the first, therefore channelling these experiences are what has made that more achievable I guess."
The re-tooled lineup features some metal heavyweights in both Alex Thomas (ex-Bolt Thrower), and Lee's former Cathedral partner-in-crime, Leo Smee. With their addition, things have definitely taken a heavier turn. To these ears, Alex brings a noticeable/pronounced destructiveness to the proceedings, and the addition of Leo just feels… right. I asked Lee, straight-up, if this new dynamic has improved things.
"It's just more of a real band with Alex and Leo involved, much tighter too. Both are extremely talented musicians and the mastery of what they do is focusing on holding back from overplaying, keeping things minimal, therefore more powerful and brutal I guess. When new ideas for songs come up, they are nailed really fast, without the need for endless weeks of rehearsals, which is a breath of fresh air to be honest."
Love From With The Dead drops on Friday, September 22nd via Rise Above Records.
