OLD PAPER: Cathedral (Terrorizer #234, Apr 2013)

Lee Dorrian's last interview as a member of Cathedral before the legendary band dissolved into the ether.

While going through a couple of Cathedral records today - and hey, there’s a good band for a Discography Deep Dive sometime, right? - I got that little twang of sadness that one of my favourite bands isn’t around anymore, albeit tempered by the fact that, unlike so many others, they bowed out on their own terms, with grace, dignity and without overstaying their welcome for a single second. I also remembered one of my favourite moments (of a long list, truth be told) of my Terrorizer magazine years - having the honour of conducting Cathedral’s very last interview for a printed magazine. Not only did I spend a wonderful afternoon having a very honest and very down to earth chat with Lee Dorrian about the ending of the band and their remarkable final album ‘The Last Spire’, still one of my favourites of their discography to this day, but we also managed to include a rather rare conversation with the man behind Cathedral’s surreal and so characteristic artwork, Mr. Dave Patchett himself. I could have waited until April next year to dig this one out of the vaults and have it timed for the 10th anniversary of the break up, but whatever. Inspiration strikes when it does, etc. So here is the issue:

Please try to ignore the ENAGAGE as much as you can, and perhaps try to block out that rather hideous pop-up of Hoest as well, and try to imagine it’s just Lee gazing into your soul or something. Nothing much more to say, it was a pretty normal issue otherwise and the majority of those bands are still around today in one form or another, so let’s go to the main event straight away. As usual, the pics have enough quality if you want to have the full magazine experience and zoom in to read, but I’ve included the full text beneath too for your convenience. Enjoy, and all hail Cathedral!

CATHEDRAL

A FUNERAL REQUEST

Cathedral are splitting up. The time has come. After two decades of doom and with tenth album 'the Last Spire' about to be unleashed, frontman Lee Dorrian looks back and talks about bowing out in style. Terrorizer raises a glass to toast...

Words: José Carlos Santos

Pics: Ester Segarra & Taya Uddin

“It's amazing what breaking up does for your career." Lee Dorrian, iconic figure of the underground, former Napalm Death vocalist, Cathedral vocalist (now former, too) and Rise Above owner, quips with a laugh, Sarcastically, yes, but without any sort of noticeable bitterness, as he analyses the sort of quasi-universal praise that has been lavished upon Cathedral ever since the legendary British doom outfit announced, a couple of years ago, that they'd be calling it quits after a couple of last shows and one final album, We have now arrived at that solemn, final moment: the fantastically-titled "The Last Spire' is upon us, and Cathedral are now no more, Looking back, as we tend to do when good things come to an end, albeit an exemplary, dignified and even desired end, as this is, Lee's half-joking little commentary does force us to wonder – have we properly appreciated Cathedral while they were still active? It's been 21 years; did we make the most of them?

"I have always thought we have been somewhat underappreciated, but what can I do about it? At the end of the day it's the people who listen to the records who decide that sort of thing," Lee ponders, "What matters is that we do care about our legacy a hell of a lot ourselves. I think that only in coming years it will be realised how important we really were. Once we're here, I think it's easy to take a band like Cathedral for granted. We were always seen as a bit of the furniture, I think. We've never really had any bad periods and we've always done respectfully well, but it's never been easy, being seen as one of those bands that's still around instead of a band that's really relevant. Because I think we have been relevant. We've never tried to fit into any kind of particular scene, we've always tried to make our influences timeless as opposed to being part of just one moment, Some people might argue differently, but that's how we've always seen it. So to bring that to a close is also a nice feeling."

Now that all of us, especially those who have indeed always thought that Cathedral are massively relevant, have had time to adjust to the initial shock of a world without Cathedral, even the more dedicated fans will have to admit that it makes sense. No-one would have wanted to see this pillar of doom, one of the most influential post-Sabbath bands in the genre, dragging around its own creative corpse like so many other former institutions of metal unfortunately do on a daily basis. The body of work they leave behind is massive and in no danger of becoming dated any century now, and most of all, you can be sure that none of it was made by an artist who didn't give a shit.

"One of the greatest things about it is having decided beforehand that we were breaking up," Lee says. "It's given us time to enjoy it. The last show in London, the show in Australia, we knew they were going to be our last. So instead of taking it for granted, we enjoyed every second of it. At the end of the day, we felt like we really achieved something. Right now, I'm content, mainly because I think we made the record we wanted to make, the record we wanted to be our last one. If I would have felt that it was crap, I'd probably be suicidal right now, but because we knew this would be the last one we consciously channelled all our energy and efforts to ensure that it would be the right way to go and that it would turn out the way we wanted it to."

Not only will Cathedral's importance be progressively recognised in forthcoming years, but most likely 'The Last Spire's amazing stature will also be fully appreciated with due time as well. It would be hard to imagine a more perfect way to bow out than with an album that feels so pure and so unmistakably a reflection of what Cathedral have always stood for musically. It has been compared to 'Forest Of Equilibrium' for several reasons, and Lee himself states in the press release that it's "almost like we did our second album last". It's as if the circle is finally complete.

"If you look at this album and the first album, it's almost like they're two bookends and everything we've done in between is in the middle of those two," he explains thoughtfully. "If I was looking ahead, some 20-odd years ago, this is how I would imagine our second album to be. Not the last one," he laughs. But the idea behind wasn't just to make one last excursion to the illustrious past, no ham-fisted 'back to the roots' attempt in fact, it could be argued that they never left those roots in the first place.

"It wasn't intentional at all," Lee says. "Many people would argue that we strayed away from our roots many years ago, but I don't think we did. We stayed true to ourselves, if anything. We just expanded our influences, but we never forgot our roots. 'Forest Of Equilibrium' was a starting point for us in every way, really. Not only it was our first album, obviously, but it was a culmination of everything we had learned up until that point and how we wanted to project our interpretation of doom metal across. As we moved forward, our sound expanded, but we've always kept the basic core, which is the riffs and the Sabbath influences. That's always been there, it has never gone away, no matter how different we may have come across in style, production or whatever. There have been times when we may have gone just a little too far in terms of just doing what we wanted to. Which I don't think is a bad thing, but you can just get a little lost in that sometimes, or at least lose a bit of focus on your direction."

'The Last Spire' not only sounds focused, but it sounds unwaveringly honest, as if it comes straight from the heart and aims straight for the heart too, the very embodiment of what doom metal was supposed to be in the first place. "You look around at what's considered to be doom these days and I find it kind of boring," Lee chuckles. "The kind of simple droning riffs-that-go-nowhere thing, copy-and-paste textbook things about the occult and all that... I just don't think it's genuine. A lot of it is just stuff that's done because these are trendy times in doom. In Cathedral, we've never really looked forward, but never looked back either, really. We just got on with it. It's only now that we knew it was coming to an end that we looked back a little and tried to summarise everything."

Given the importance of 'The Last Spire', it would be natural if its creation would have been a heavy undertaking. Not that many bands do a record knowing already that it will be their last, let alone bands with such an important legacy to preserve, a legacy that they care deeply about, like Lee has said just now. Besides, the inevitable element of sadness creeping in over the fact that this is the last music they'll ever do together could have turned the whole process into a very laborious one. But Cathedral are bigger than that.

"I did feel responsibility, yes, but not pressure," Lee reflects. "I would hate to leave things messy and get the feeling that this record wasn't quite right for the occasion. But we were relaxed with it. It's hard to explain how this album came about, because it came to us very naturally. It wasn't forced, but it wasn't done in five minutes either. We didn't just sit there and strum a couple of riffs and that's it, we spent a lot of time on it, thinking about it, and making sure it was the right way to leave. We actually really enjoyed it. We took our time, too. We did record everything pretty quickly, but not in one go. We recorded over weekends, stretched over a few months and it was really great doing it that way, there was no clock ticking against us. It allowed us to build a much better picture of the whole thing and also of each individual song in our minds and of how we wanted them to really be. We could just go home and sit down after a studio session and that's amazing. All those songs are as they should be, because we took the time to allow that to happen. We haven't been afraid to go where we really wanted to go. It's probably one of our least commercial records and we haven't done it for any other reason other than to bring all of this to a conclusion. There was no holding back."

That sadness, though...

"Yes, at the same time, it was quite sad, of course," he admits. "We knew it was the last thing we were ever going to do. I mean, I never sat down in a chair and cried my eyes out, but this has been my life. I've spent over half my life doing Cathedral, it's not something we've done as a little bit of a thing on the side, we've had to sacrifice a hell of a lot to keep the band together. This music was something we've always felt we had to do, to follow that path. We didn't really know where the path was leading at any time, but we knew it was something we had to do."

Just like breaking up.

"Exactly. This is not something that we decided yesterday, it's been a few years building up to this record. Breaking up is as important as existing in the first place. We're doing it for a reason, because in our hearts it's the right thing to do. We've done as much as we can musically in this band that we're in. I don't like it when other bands carry on just for the sake of it. You see so many bands that started off great and did a few killer albums and it's all they know and they just carry on, dragging the name down and losing the dynamics they had in the first place, just going through the motions. I really, really didn't want that to happen to Cathedral and that is why we're stopping it. We could easily have carried on without giving a fuck, but to me that would be a complete sacrilege to the name."

It's inevitable to hear some of the lyrics on 'The Last Spire' without trying to read a bit further into them ("Living in the shadow of the damned Cathedral”, anyone?), but that’s most likely just context playing tricks with our head. It's not like Cathedral never had final-sounding lyrics before - there's an album called ‘Endtyme' and all. Still, one wonders. "I don't think I was deliberately trying to make out a 'Ha ha, this is the end!' kind of thing, although there is a track there called 'The Last Laugh', a very spontaneous thing, which turns into nightmarish screaming, that could be something of the sort," Lee reveals. "Maybe that's the sound of frustration, maybe it's a go at some of the cynics we've had over the years saying, 'Well, fuck you, see you later, I don't know. I haven't really sat down and calculated the lyrics, doing some kind of mockery about the album being the last. I wanted to do something that I could feel it's done a lot more from where I stand, lyrically. An observation of things around me, much more than being out there. I wanted it to be more specific and more direct, because the world around me scares me more than the occult. Reality scares me more than anything. I think reality is doom, honestly. So I wanted to put across a feeling of complete... disillusion, that's the word. I've woken up to the fact that things are the way they are, and I just have to deal with it and get on with it in my own way. Frustration and bewilderment and I suppose anger, it all comes through. The way that we’ve projected it is the most honest and co way that we possibly could.“

Though the dissolution of Cathedral – which also features long-standing drummer Brian Dixon – is a big deal for everyone, its absence won’t change Lee's life in a particularly significant way. In terms of making music, besides the occasional punk outburst with Septic Tank, a project also featuring Cathedral members Gaz Jennings and American bassist Scott Carlson (“Just a bit of fun, really, it's no the main band that we're going to do after Cathedral or anything,” Lee clarifies), there isn't much on his horizon, but running a successful record label - Rise Above was instrumental in giving the world one of its most popular metal bands right now, Ghost BC, lest we forget - and taking care of an infant daughter seem to be quite enough for now, thank you very much.

"I'll be dedicating a lot more time to the label, not that I wasn't already," he says with a weary laugh. "We've had a few problems last year, we had a flood in our offices that caused a lot of trouble and I've been dealing with that for the past three or four months, so we'll try to get that definitely sorted out in time of the big releases we've had lined up for this year, like Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats which is the next big one for us, besides the Cathedral album of course and then the Purson album, followed by The Devil's Blood and Church Of Misery. So, I'm going to be as dedicated as ever, even more so. I don't have anything in mind for making any music aside from Septic Tank, but that's the beauty of it. Maybe I'll do something, maybe I won't. I don't like to do plans like that. If the right people and the right idea come along, I'd like to do something, but if not, that's okay. Dealing with the label is what takes up most of my time and that's what I'll be doing all day, so that's my main priority for the near future. Not having Cathedral around is not a drastic impact in my life and it doesn't mean I have nothing to do - it's just one less thing to do. Besides, although the band is over, I'll still have to deal with a lot of other sides to it, there's the back catalogue that's still there, I'll always be involved in one way or another. I'm constantly busy, working every single day of the week and besides I have to look after my daughter, luckily she's at an age where shell start going to nursery soon... so instead of working through the night I can probably get something done through the day too."

Lee Dorian, family man, record label owner, and now former vocalist of Cathedral, extraordinarily influential doom band that is no more. That'll take some getting used to, but with ‘The Last Spire' as the final elegiac chapter on a remarkable career to help us through, we'll be alright. Forever in the shadow of that damned Cathedral.

---

DAVE PATCHETT

Cathedral's musical legacy has always been enhanced by the unique and inspired artwork of Dave Patchett…

DAVE ON MEETING LEE
"We both lived in Hillfields, in the high rise flats. When me and Lee started living there it was a pretty normal working class, tower block area, but in the early '80s it got quite dangerous with drugs, prostitution and street gangs taking over. I formed a group of artists around that time, we called ourselves The Dream Illustrators and we combined very accurate technique with surrealist ideas. We were mixing high-quality, old-fashioned technique with vivid imagination and we had exhibitions in and around Coventry. Lee visited one of those exhibitions and he left a note on the comments book, saying he was interested in my paintings and that if I contacted him he might provide me with some work. That was very good timing, because it was just when Cathedral was beginning, with the first album, so I ended up collaborating with them from the start."

ON HIS FIRST CATHEDRAL PAYCHECK
"I was a dustman and then I was taken down with a football injury, so I became unemployed, living on benefits, during Thatcher's period of mass unemployment. The acceptance of my first painting for the band meant that, when I went to Nottingham, to Earache records, was rewarded with Dig giving me a thousand pounds. Lee and his gang and the sound engineer took me back to Coventry afterwards and I felt like a king with that sort of money in my pocket. Travelling back in that car, I would have done anything Cathedral wanted me to do."

ON THE MUSIC OF CATHEDRAL
"People always ask me, but I was never much into metal. The bands that I was crazy about at the time were Prefab Sprout, Crowded House and Steely Dan, and I still am to this day. I think 'Gaucho' is the best album that has ever been recorded. I like some progressive folk and Neil Young, he's amazing. It was a bit of a clash when I found out what Cathedral sounded like. I'm still a bit mystified to this day. I've really loved a few songs, but the doom part never quite took off for me, so I'm amazed that they can mix what is for me such fantastic music with other kinds of music that I can't really get. I've never been a drugs man, I've never had an hallucination in my life. I've got my own imagination and I want to keep that untampered with. But maybe they would have helped me appreciate the music more!"

ON WORKING WITH OTHER BANDS
"I've got no 100 per-cent exclusivity to Cathedral, but have a loyalty to them because they've never let me down, so if any other band would call me asking for my work, I would probably call Lee asking for his opinion. But it's never actually happened. There have only been only one or two bands that Lee has put on to me, asking me to work with them. There's been a few nutcase sort of emails, from bands that sound like they're all over the place. They sounded like they were out of their minds and there's never been any follow-up."

ON TECHNIQUE
"The first drawings on the album covers are all straight from my mind; there's no copying from any models or anything. If you look at the 'Forest Of Equilibrium cover, it's very naive, very smooth and simple drawing and it all came straight from my mind. When I came to the middle period albums, by that time I was using all sorts of sources, from magazines to newspapers, because there are a lot of figures on some of those drawings, maybe 150 in some of them. If I was inventing them all, it would have taken me months. Then, on the latter period, I discovered a technique that I used on 'The Garden Of Unearthly Delights'. If you look at those figures, they're not from anywhere else, they're totally original. It works like 'accidents' from swishing paint around. I use a method that involves plastic bags, sponges and wet paint on the shiny white surfaces on the back of photographs. I've got tonnes of envelopes full of those little original creatures. For The Last Spire', Lee convinced me to the original methods, so I kind of went full circle with Cathedral."

ON INSPIRATION FOR CATHEDRAL DRAWINGS
“There's usually an initial conversation about what the album is going to be like. Lee is a strange bloke, he's an anarchist and I'm a socialist, so he thinks I'm a waste of time and I think he's a waste of time. But on certain things, we came from the same ethereal world and I've always had a touch of gothic in me. I'm fascinated by religion and by the stupidity of people that get stuck into religion. I know enough about history to know the horrors that went on because of religion. To be alive in the 12th century meant that you had to shut your mind and your mouth to just exist and that must have been awful. Cathedral spent a lot of time in that period, conceptually, so we've been in line with one another in that aspect, so I had no trouble at all depicting the things he likes to depict, which are basically the end of the world and the beginning of the world. His main, concurrent theme, I think, is that everything goes around in circles. That civilisation reinvents itself, that it goes back to barbarism, goes forward again and then back to barbarism. That there's not much hope in progress, because people are so stupid. He might not say that people are stupid, but I'll say it for him."

ON THE END OF CATHEDRAL
"I'll tell you what's sad - I was watching the Rolling Stones the other day perform at the Super Bowl, and that was sad. They were like skeletons. Rattling their bones around. When you're 50, I think that your rock 'n' roll days should be more or less over, with a few shining exceptions. I'm sure Leonard Cohen can go on until he's 120, but if you're going to shake your head around, you should have the notion of when to stop. I think it's the perfect time for them, and I support their decision. Of course, if they decided to do one last album in two or three years, I'd be delighted to work with them again. But I'm happy with what I've done with them."