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Cathedral > Forest of Equilibrium > Reviews > hippie_holocaust
Cathedral - Forest of Equilibrium

Active Nihilism Achieved Through Doom - 95%

hippie_holocaust, November 8th, 2011

Sometimes you know you’re going to like an album before you ever even hear it. Cathedral’s Forest of Equilibrium just seemed to have an unquestionable gravity about it; I needed this. So, knowing that I would never find a copy anywhere in my non-metallic town, I took to the interweb, and days later began a bleak and damnable journey to the depths of a painfully nihilistic abyss. Doomseekers, beware, this opus is truly ‘heavy,’ in the archaic sense of the word. The stark sense of misanthropy and self-loathing expressed herein is quite palpable just in the sheer weight of the down-tuned and drear guitars, and the creeping and desolate drums, coloured wonderfully with cascading fills and an oddly bright snare.

Young Lee Dorrian finds himself in a state of rebirth, having washed his hands of the speed-obsessed wankery of grindcore, and moves forward with his passion for `eavy metal with some like-minded blokes who’ve a penchant for the grim riffage of the ancient doomsters. After getting his start as a grind front man performing the frenzied hoarse barking required for eighty second bursts of songs, Dorrian re-introduces himself to the world with clear vision as a leather-lung priest of damnation.

“Picture of Beauty and Innocence,” the delicate acoustic introduction to “Commiserating the Celebration,” is just that, a brief glimmer of hope beckoning the listener to enter the veiled realm of this dark and weepy forest. What strange creatures lurk within? Are the wood-elves cool with uninvited humans? The answer is yes, and they have plenty of longbottom leaf to go around. So fill your pipe and light up, and prepare to embark upon a grandiose yet dismal adventure.

The musicians are united in their intent to make you feel the weight of their sorrow; their catharsis makes for a stifling heaviness that will clear the room of any fan of popular culture, so you can “Commiserate the Celebration” of your estrangement from a mundane and sterile world. Forest of Equilibrium is a just reward for those who refuse to be spoon fed the meaninglessness of decadent societal machines fueled by greed and insincerity. If you regularly watch television, vote, or comb your hair, for instance, you will not like this. Songs like “Ebony Tears” and the abysmal “Serpent Eve” are monumental crushers that make Cathedral’s isolation abundantly, morbidly clear.

“Soul Sacrifice” is rich in heavy metal swagger, opening with a glowing riff of tumbling hammer-ons. This is the album’s only exercise in brevity and serves as a sort of intermission to the leaden mammoths that comprise the bulk of FoE. This song is appropriately followed by the Cyclopean obelisk “A Funeral Request,” a lumbering Sabbathian juggernaut that is the quintessence of infernal doom metal. The guitar tone here is so thick and juicy you can actually taste the hatred. It may well be that the desired effect of this music is to liberate through a mutual disdain for conventionality.

The title track plunges you into a dark, dank cosmos of weirdness. Dorrian’s otherworldly voice is the perfect match for this sullen symphony, with its spiraling motifs creating a feeling of buoyancy in a gurgling sea of discontent. “Reaching Happiness, Touching Pain” is one of the most aptly named works of doom ever conceived. The flute accompaniment at the beginning of the song lends an air of mystique to the gloom, as the instrumentalists plod along at their depressive craft. This multi-layered, massive piece builds like a late-afternoon thunderhead which culminates in a damning crescendo of majestically macabre pipe organ and distorted grandeur.

This album is required listening for metalheads who wish to delve to the vast underworld of an antiquated art form called doom. Through its minimalism we reach happiness. Through its undeniable nihilism, we touch the pain of its conception.