WITH THE DEAD — With the Dead (review)

WITH THE DEAD — With the Dead album cover Album · 2015 · Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Nightfly
With The Dead are a new UK doom metal band formed by former Cathedral vocalist Lee Dorrian and the original Electric Wizard rhythm section Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening on bass and drums respectively. Bagshaw also handles guitar duties here as he did in Ramesses, the band he and Greening were members of after leaving Electric Wizard.

With the musicians involved here it should come as no surprise that With The Dead is one heavy mutha of an album. In fact it’s very much what I was expecting. The music bears more resemblance to Electric Wizard than Cathedral excepting their ground breaking debut “Forest Of Equilibrium” which parallels can be drawn. The album consists of just six tracks – all slow, heavy, fuzzy doom metal of the kind of quality you’d expect from these seasoned players. “The Cross” picks up the pace a bit, but this is relatively speaking of course. Quite a short album by today’s standards, none of the songs outstay their welcome clocking in around the six to nine minute mark, but stick around long enough to establish some hypnotic grooves that really get under your skin after a few plays. Highlight for me has got to be “Living With The Dead” with its insistent repetitive riff that once heard doesn’t want to leave your head but the rest of the album is of similar quality. Dorrian’s instantly recognisable vocals are darker and dirtier than most of his Cathedral Output though their final album “The Last Spire” did see a partial return to earlier times.

It’s good to have Dorrian back fronting a band again and not just running his Rise Above Records label. Hopefully this will be more than a one off as its one of the best doom records of 2015.

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