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Cathedral > Forest of Equilibrium > Reviews > balbulus
Cathedral - Forest of Equilibrium

Earthy, rich and enrapturing... - 99%

balbulus, July 13th, 2008

In days long past (1992), when I first bought this album (assuming it to be death metal since it was on Earache), I was shocked; I had never heard anything so painfully slow. I had heard of 'doom metal', but assumed it was just another term for death metal. Yet, over the next week or so the album began to grow on me, and before long it had me completely under its spell. The dark esoteric atmosphere, the richly symbolic and poetic lyrics, the haunting touches of acoustic instruments, all showed me what more could be achieved with heavy music than just brutality and speed. It proved to be the founding point of my more experimental music tastes over the years.

Many people view this album as desolate or monochrome; I, however, find it extremely rich and colourful. The effect of the album as a whole is similar to that of walking through an old churchyard in the countryside: a sense of immense age and sadness, underlaid with an organic, almost pagan earthiness that is quite enrapturing.

The guitars are tuned way, way down (to B I believe), and the tone is thick, dark and rounded, like the age-worn stones of some colossal ruined edifice. I have always thought that perhaps they could have a touch more bite, but I don't know if this would ruin the aged atmosphere of the album. It would be interesting to hear a remastered version. The music is comprised of subtly twisted Sabbath-inspired riffs played at a much slower pace to emphasise the crushing impact, overlaid here and there with sinister harmonies that at times sound almost atonal. The effect is a dark, unsettled dream-like atmosphere, almost psychedelic in places, but not in the 'groovy' way that Cathedral would later adopt. The only hint of this later style is in the up-tempo track 'Soul Sacrifice', but even this does not detract from the dark atmosphere of the album. The only other up-tempo moment is the fantastically heavy mid section of 'A Funeral Request'.

At various points throughout the album are subtle touches of acoustic guitar and flute which add an earthy, prog/folk element to the music, but not in an overt manner. In addition, the end section of closing track 'Reaching Happiness, Touching Pain' features a Hammer-esque church organ, which ends the album with an air of demonically possessed triumph.

Mike Smail from Penance provided the drums for this album, and his relatively busy style tends to incorporate a lot of fills and syncopations, rather than just sticking to a sparse doom beat like the majority of extreme doom drummers. This helps to keep the slow pace of the music from becoming too stark and monotonous.

As for the vocals, Lee Dorrian's voice lies somewhere between a low mournful groan and a deep death growl, making easy classification difficult: this is certainly more extreme than most run-of-the-mill doom bands, and yet it doesn't quite fit within the doom/death spectrum. However, the influence this album had on that genre is immense. I do tend to class this album as 'doom/death'.

The lyrics are beautifully poetic, ranging from the gothic romanticism of 'A Funeral Request' ("White rose perfume / go with thee on thy way / unto thy shady tomb / low music doth fall / lightly as autumn leaves / about thy solemn pall / faint incense rises"), via the crushing idolatrous menace of 'Serpent Eve' ("Gather to the Lords of facade / Kneel beneath the cross of false / Crawl to the figure speared / Wither within its name"), to the philosophically symbolic 'Equilibrium' ("Lost in the battlefield of opposite extremes / I ponder on the embankment that stands inbetween / the monochrome and colour, entirity I see / the beauty and Chaos of Fate and Destiny").

The cover art (painted by Dave Patchett) perfectly captures the feeling of the album, a Bosch-inspired scene from some unsettled dream with strange disproportionate figures engaging in various revelries. It is the sort of image in which you can discover something new upon each viewing.

'Forest Of Equilibrium' totally changed my life. The follow up, 'The Ethereal Mirror', changed my life once again: its change of direction shattered me totally, and left me feeling disillusioned. I started searching for bands that held the same feeling contained within 'Forest of Equilibrium', and whilst I discovered some great doom bands, none came close to the magical formula. Solitude Aeturnus and Revelation weren't as heavy; Winter, Funeral and Thergothon were too bleak; MDB and Anathema were too romantic/gothic; Sleep and Electric Wizard too stoner. The closest I have found in the years that have passed are the 3 tracks from pre-Electric Wizard outfit Thy Grief Eternal, but even this lacks a lot of the feeling I am searching for, sounding more akin to the less developed sound of Cathedral's 'In Memoriam' demo. The only conclusion I can draw is that 'Forest Of Equilibrium' is one of a kind, a unique entity that will never be paralleled, a world that exists in its own space, and any search for something similar is ultimately fruitless.

The only option is to turn around and head back into the Forest, to lose yourself in its hidden depths, and to wonder upon its meaning.