23 years ago. It seems like a lifetime ago yet at the same time seems just like yesterday. Does that make any sense at all? Well, I think you get the picture. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 23 years since the now legendary metal band Cathedral released the album, The Ethereal Mirror. The Ethereal Mirror was definitely not the album that most Cathedral fans thought they would make after their debut album, The Forest of Equilibrium. Where their debut was pretty much a doom masterpiece, The Ethereal Mirror found Cathedral bridging the gap between their doom roots and the inevitable influence of Black Sabbath and the psych rock sounds of the 60’s and 70’s. By doing so, Cathedral forged a genre all their own that 20 something years later would spawn a whole new generation of bands.
22 years ago, the unstoppable wave of Grunge was in full force and the landscape of hard rock/heavy metal was changing. Rob Halford had quit Judas Priest, Bruce Dickinson was out of Iron Maiden for nearly two years at this point, Metallica had cut all their hair off, and even Dave Mustaine of Megadeth was wearing flannel. In my eyes, the hard rock/metal that I loved so much was dying. Hell, even the metal band I was in at the time wanted to start doing an Offspring cover. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and had me grabbing a lifeboat and jumping ship.
The Ethereal Mirror was not only a truly groundbreaking album but, for me, it was a life changing album. When I first heard this album I had pretty much given up hope for metal music. I had already quit my metal band and figured that as far as metal goes, I would only have all the greats from the past to take with me into the future. I had no clue that metal music as a whole would even survive but when I heard the Ethereal Mirror, I knew that eventually everything would be ok. In my mind, Cathedral was standing on the axis and as the world changed around them. They seemed to be rooted in something so old yet something so new that I had never heard anything like it before.
Some folks may ask, “Brainfart, how was it a life changing album for you?” Well, that’s a great question. It was life changing to me because it proved to me that you could be different. You didn’t have to change with the landscape in order to maintain some sort of relevance. Instead of running with the pack, why not break away and lead your own? While I may not have done this playing metal music, it did make my transition into folk music an easier one because of hearing this album. It made me excited that a band stood so strong on their ground and didn’t care what surrounded them so I chose to do that same thing only taking a different musical path.
After the follow up release, the excellent Carnival Bizarre, I lost touch with Cathedral as I became deep rooted in my folk music. While I lost touch with the Cathedral’s progression, over the 20+ years of playing folk music, I never stopped listening to my classic metal and The Ethereal Mirror was always one of the albums I gravitated to. From the Sabbath laden doom of “Ride” to the sonic good time groove of “Midnight Mountain” to the psychedelic undertones of “Fountain of Innocence”, The Ethereal Mirror eventually became every bit as classic to me as Master of Reality, Holy Diver, or even The Number of the Beast. It became an album that reminded me that the later days of metal weren’t so grim and ugly.
In 2009 when I started The Great Southern Brainfart, I started to see a resurgence, a resurrection of sorts of the very hard rock/metal music that I grew up loving. A good number of the bands I found myself discovering all seemed to point back to a deep rooted influence of Cathedral. Where Cathedral reached back to the 60’s and 70’s, I could hear more modern bands such as Blood Ceremony, Uncle Acid & The Dead Beats, Orchid, and Mount Salem all reach back to Cathedral. To hear the lasting, impacting influence of Cathedral reminds me that back in a time when the metal world was changing, Cathedral released an album that stood on its own refusing to compromise, change, or shift with the landscape. The Ethereal Mirror is an album that inspired and influenced a whole new generation of bands and for that, I am forever grateful. Have you looked into The Ethereal Mirror yet? If not, you must. You’ll love what you see… and hear.
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