With The Dead (2015)

With The Dead (2015)

“All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?"

Ozzy Osbourne

By: Ghost Writer

I came to know about Lee Dorrian at the time of the classic Napalm Death album From Enslavement to Obliteration, I loved that record so much, for me it broke all the rules of the game, suddenly music wasn't restrictive, it was heavy, intense and free form, and Dorrian was at the top of it as the lead growler; After that, Dorrian and the band started looking for a more mature way of attacking music, their music became more "musical", and they became more and more famous in the United Kingdom, Dorrian apparently couldn't stand that, success for him was equal to selling out so he left Napalm Death seeking for a new musical vehicle, he wanted to go against the speed freak legacy he helped to build with ND, so as a non-conformist, he went the other route, he got immerse on the doom genre, taking inspiration for the heaviest band if all, Black Sabbath, but also looked at more contemporary slow and heavy acts like The Melvins, the result was Cathedral, a band that sounded so good at the beginning, the band lead a whole renaissance of the stoner rock and doom genres, but I guess the band started becoming a parody of their Sabbath heroes, Dorrian finally called quits for Cathedral and started looking again for a new band.

In this new quest, Dorrian was quickly followed by two members of the also acclaimed doom band Electric Wizard, epiphany or not, the three guys decided to make a record and perhaps start a band, more a thing of a single record than a long lasting band, With the Dead is a monumental recording that seems to recapture all the great weird black magic had in its humble begging, their debut album (Who knows if their debut and farewell?) is a compact and precise work of the kind of oozing doom Dorrian delivered in the very first Cathedral records, it has again that hyper slow and heavy approach Lee learned listening to such bands as the spread mentioned The Melvins, as drums and guitars moves slowly like the Mexican economy but at a steady pace, opener Crown of Burning Stars immediately puts the band in the doom metal territory with is hook pulled guitars and zombie walk like slow drumming, nothing outstanding but an artifact that works as a whole.

But is on The Cross where the band really starts to move with confidence, the tunes start to groove and the musicians start really to create rocking magic, that along with Dorrian dark and cosmic chanting is where the record really starts to soar high, there's passionate drumming and truly dense guitar riffing, we must say that Dorrian is no longer the inhuman monster smashing imperialism, fascism and Nazism, we came to know in his ND days, nor the cheap Ozzy "wanna be", who chased witches and sang tales about black magic, of his late Cathedral days, he has become a mystic creature from beyond, I guess he is quite aware that certain special magic was lost in his former band after the out there Forest of Equilibrium and he is trying hard to get it back with this band, Nephthys is an epic piece which moves slowly with heavy pace just like a mammoth, here, Dorrian uses every chance to introduce gloomy melodies and create a kind of dark mantra while on Living with the Dead goes heavier than hell releasing dense riffs of radiating guitar capable of burning the skin and cause major damage, is the album heaviest piece and Dorrian really uses it let his vocals bleed.

With the Dead, the album is another stellar piece of ear grinding doom by a guy who really knows about heaviness, the thing here is that Dorrian, the nonconformist is going here to places where he has already been before and that leaves the listener, in this case, me, a little puzzled, Was really necessary to end Cathedral in order to recapture its early magic? Or the end of that band was not exactly what Dorrian wanted and he is trying to get it back? Listen to this and to of Equilibrium and you will get the big picture.