Cathedral - The Guessing Game

Cathedral are veterans, doom pioneers, you don’t need reminding of that. But over 20 years since their inception and five years since their last album, The Garden Of Unearthly Delights, Cathedral have dropped one of their most adventurous records to date. This is The Guessing Game, a double album jaunt of psychedelic, ambitious and progressive work.

The first disc sees the band revelling in some heavy, bombastic riffing on 'Funeral Of Dreams' and particularly so on 'Painting In The Dark'. But the intro track, 'The Immaculate Misconception' has an oddly fitting title in that any conception you had of Cathedral’s sound prior to this has been now been dispelled and ultimately altered.

As well as that there’s some explicit dabbling in the lighter shades of their pallet. But the varying tracks shift harmoniously through moods, creating an enthralling array of styles. This is made greatly evident by the second disc throwing a few spanners in the works and getting heavier and grittier. That shift is made oh so palpable by last track of part one - 'Cats, Incense, Candles & Wine'. It amiably tramples through nursery rhyme-like tones turning to a light hearted trod.

Even with this massively psychedelic exuberance resonating throughout The Guessing Game, there are some profound remnants of Cathedral’s squalid edge lurking throughout, like the droning intro to 'La Noche Del Buque Maldito' which morphs into bouncy riffs and carnival-eque eccentricities.

Vocally, the intrepid Lee Dorrian is his usually valiant self, thundering tremulously through each track with an ease that is only accumulated from twenty-plus years in the field.

But The Guessing Game’s most interesting element is how it utilises a multiplicity of instruments outside of the box – Moog Taurus, mellotron, Auto Harp to ramble off a few. In fact the instrumental title track even has some inescapable nods to King Crimson and Yes.

But returning to that vivacious nature, with a feel good vibe to close is 'Journey Into Jade', a overt retrospect of the band’s lifetime, replete with both highs and lows and a view to the future.

The Guessing Game isn’t a dark album by any means, but certainly not a light or faint one either. It’s, simply put, as mad as a child with ADD after guzzling a few cans of Monster. It’s peculiar and flamboyant, however still majestically voluminous and a record that won’t (and this is a promise) reveal itself to you in the first spin.

8/10