Cathedral/Church of Misery/Gates of Slumber

The Village
Dublin
27/4/10

Hopped on the bus with the lovely Nicola for this. Been a long time since I've taken a bus and when I get on one I always end up looking like some kind of lopsided Octopus trying to get comfortable.
We entered The Village during what I could only guess was halfway through THE GATES OF SLUMBERS' set.
Slumber play old school metal, think Venom, Celtic Frost Morbid tales era, crossed with a fuck load of Saint Vitus especially in the fuzzy guitar tone, and the vocals.
I liked them, but they tended to drag on a bit, plus the ropey sound didn't help an awful lot, a lot of the time I found the drums taking over everything.

Watching CHURCH OF MISERY is like hopping into a time machine and fucking off back to the Seventies, these lads clearly have a boner for Sabbath, The guitarist is wearing flares and a large silver crucifix necklace and looks a lot like David St Hubbins, plus the T shirts I saw from them at the merch desk even bare the Sabbath Devil logo.
A lot of their set tended to drag on into the bluesy Doom jam thing, there's a little Sleep thrown in amongst it all, and a lot of Dodgy posing coming from the singer (sure you'll have that) good enough overall, but not enough to keep me interested, I'd probably dig it a lot more on record.

The last time I saw CATHEDRAL was at Hellfest last year, in a massive tent, packed to the rafters, drunk, dying of what I could only imagine was heatstroke and rubbing elbows with a lot of hairy French metallers.
There was a massive build up in my head for that set, seeing as Cathedral are one of my most favourite bands ever, one of the many bands that got me playing in a Doom band yadda yadda so this could be nothing more than genius right? WRONG
To shorten this, the set was half arsed, band didn't seem into it, Nicola pointed out one of the band members yawning, atmosphere was shite, so.........
It was great to see them back on form, leaving out a lot of questionable material, but hearing Lee Dorrian speak the words "FREAKS AND LEPERS STEP RIGHT UP... THE CARNIVAL... BIZARRE!" will rank amongst the happiest moments of my life, seeing as its one of my all time favourite Cathedral tracks.
"Ride" and "Serpents eve" were both epic, and "North Berwick witch trials" was ridiculously rocking, with some deadly stage moves from Dorrian.
The only downer for me was the new material. Ok, I wasn't expecting them to leave any of it out seeing as they have just released a double album, but this gig was the first place I was going to hear it, and frankly, it was a little dodgy.
"Death of an anarchist" and a song I didn't catch the name of, something about cats went down like a led balloon in my head, I couldn't get into it at all.
I don't usually like hearing people after they go to see a band live on the back of a new album and complain when they play all new material and leave out the oldies, but tonight I got a little insight into that, perhaps they could of chosen their setlist a little more carefully, but asides from the newer material, this was fantastic, if only they could come to Galway somehow next time.

We left early in order to catch the Quarter past eleven Go bus and get food. At this time they were encoring with "Corpsecycle" so I didn't really mind leaving. Then I found out they also played Hopkins, fuck my fucking life.
That and the Go bus drove off on us, leaving us on a doorstep in the on and off rain until one, leading to a very delirious nights sleep, good times.

Griff