Cathedral - In Memoriam (LP, 180 gram, Gatefold)

Facts Vinyl LP pressing. As with a choice few truly great bands, the first self-financed 1990 cassette recording by Cathedral was a pioneering underground masterpiece in it's own right - the sound of a young band exploring it's newfound chemistry, finding confident variations on a flawless list of influences and cultivating a sound and style that would prove hugely inspirational throughout the 1990s and beyond, being a major influence on everyone from Electric Wizard through to Reverend Bizarre. Where most demos are little more than a dry run for the first album, In Memoriam still has it's own distinct and important identity in the Cathedral canon. The debut LP that followed, Forest Of Equilibrium, has a somber, devout, melodic and mystical grandeur all of it's own - but In Memoriam has a far murkier, earthier, more deathly intent. Creepy, cryptic and bowel-looseningly heavy, it represents the first time that the doom metal styling's of Trouble, Saint Vitus, Pentagram, and Watchfinder General had been rendered in a new, more extreme metallic form. At the beginning of the new decade, it was really only Cathedral who were proud to assert the influence of true doom metal - a perennially unfashionable genre, but especially in a turn-of-the-decade metal scene so obsessed with speed, technicality, brutality and modernity.