So this is the end? Tongue-in-cheek entitled swansong from Lee Dorrian’s sometimes shape shifting psychedelic doom outfit offers just six proper tunes. The opening ‘Entrance To Hell’ is three repetitive minutes of church bells, noisy feedback and a lone voice saying “Bring Out Your Dead.” Later, there’s a 39-second ‘The Last Laugh’. The others all eclipse six minutes, with a pair nearly twice that length! Coming full circle, most recall the grinding guitars and primordial sludge of their “Forest Of Equilibrium” debut. No ‘Midnight Mountain’ here. In the second half of the 12:03 track ‘Pallbearer’, Cathedral venture down a short-lived path, one that sees an odd acoustic embellishment and female chant, before stepping on the tempo’s accelerator, then finally coasting home. Like a racecar, out of gas, lurching towards the finish line, they hope not to stop short of the checkered flag.

Fuzzy wall of feedback characterizes ‘Cathedral Of The Damned’, at six minutes, the shortest track. At the 3:19 mark, there’s an otherwise unaccompanied flourish of “doorbells,” straight out of left field! ‘Infestation Of Grey Death’ teeters as it crawls, an occasional otherworldly, bizarre keyboard accompaniment sneaking in, at various points. Mournful cello, with only the sporadic, heavy end of the piano keys, introduces ‘The Observation’, which after six minutes becomes an electronic (synthesizer and echoing vocal) jam, certainly the most lively moments on an otherwise morose platter. The plodding heaviness of ‘This Body, Thy Tomb’ finale staggers agonizingly slowly towards its ultimate end, punctuated midway by bubbling water and ethereal sound effects (sans music), although from that point, the keyboard underpinning enlivens things, slightly, the final five minutes all instrumental. Neither a tuneful, nor easy listen, it’s as unsettling as the thought of the music world without Cathedral. RIP