Rob caught up with Cathedral in Birmingham before their headline show at the Academy to talk about their long career and plans for the future.

In your long 21 year career you have released 9 full length studio albums, various EPs and singles and literally have hours and hours of music, you must find it hard picking set lists these days or have you found an easy way to do so?
Lee Dorrian) I left Napalm Death in '89, I met Gary the Guitarist and Griff the bass player a couple of years earlier, I met Gary through Nuclear Assault and Griff because he was a friend of Jeff from Carcus, and realised they were into slow, heavy Doom metal stuff, and not many people were at the time, and they were both musicians, after leaving Napalm Death, I had no ambitions to start a new band, but it just so happens that me and Griff got pissed one night, and said so why don't we start a band in the slow heavy doom way, the next day we discussed what were were talking about the previous night, and we thought it would be impossible to find people that play that way, Griff remembered Gaz, and asked him if he wanted to form band for the hell of it really, more of a project band at first, just to play music that not a lot of people were interested in really, it started from there really, we released our first demo in 1990, we sent that around, and we signed to earache for better or worse, and we wanted to pay tribute to our favourite bands.

How would you say the music scene in Coventry is these days?
I couldn't tell you as I live in London these days.

You have recently released your latest album ‘The Guessing Game’ what was that like to write and record and how does it compare to your previous albums?
We took our time writing it really, Gaz and myself started writing 2 and a half years ago and after our last album we took a year off away from the and reassess what we wanted to do, so we started wearing 2 and a half years ago and within a year we'd written an albums worth of material, which was more in the manner of our first album, but after coming up with all that stuff we decided to scrap it and start all over again. We got a good budget from Nuclear Blast, and decided to use it all and make a decent record with decent production, and be more adventurous with our sound and go places we haven't been before with the sound. When we made the decision to drop all the original stuff, we found it quite easy to come up with new stuff and it got to the stage that we couldn't stop writing and we wrote/recorded another 5 in the studio, our producer wanted to kill us after 5 days because we kept coming up with more ideas, The main difference was we didn't go into a studio for 6 months solid and came up with ideas, we came up with the ideas outside of the studio, and we started rehearsing with Brian and Lee every month or so to get the songs tight, it was a different approach than before, we gave ourselves time, because after 20 years there's no need to rush.

What response have you had from both the fans and the press?
From what I can tell its been positive because after the 20 years, to be still considered semi relevant and coming up with new ideas is great. But we don't do the band for any other reason than to make music, its not a business, even though that makes it harder, we're hard to categorized, as cool as that is that makes us hard to promote and financially to keep the band together, non of us are rich guys, so we cant do this every now and then, everyone has jobs and there own personal lives and were not teenagers any more. But the press reviews have been good, there's gonna be mixed reviews for sure, but the magazine reviews have been cool, not sure about the internet ones though. But at the end of the day were happy with the record, in fact its probably the most consistent records we've done, even though its so long, its normally a case of one or two tracks of not being so good and saying why did we put that on there, it was because someone in the band wanted it on there, but with this album were pretty much pleased with it all, which is a first.

If you had to choose a favourite track from ‘The Guessing Game’ what would it be and why?
I like funeral of dreams, the first proper track on the album, that pretty good to perform live and Cats, Incense, Candles and Wine, that's a kind of folky ,jazz rock track, that's good because its not a full on heavy track, it shows a different side to the band, we've been playing that live too.

In your long 21 year career you have released 9 full length studio albums, various EPs and singles and literally have hours and hours of music, you must find it hard picking set lists these days or have you found an easy way to do so?
This time were doing a lot off the new album, about 6, and one off the first album, one off the 2nd album, and one off The Carnival Bizarre, over the years we've covered all our albums live, and this time we wanted to show off the different sides of the band b playing a lot off our new album. Its a varied mix, its not the obvious choice for a set list but it works.

You are currently at the end of a short UK tour, how has it been?
Its been great, both bands are really great to play with, audiences have been brilliant, only thing is with doing 6 back to back, its fucked with my throat a bit, but hopefully it will be alright tonight as last night I was struggling a bit, because the volume is so loud on stage, and we play about an hour and 20 minutes, without a break, and we haven't done many shows recently, but apart from that its been a killer tour.

You are playing Birmingham tonight what can we expect from the show?
If anyone knows the band, they know what were like. On this tour, were using keyboards, because of the new album, the only real difference is that were a bit older and we use keyboards. What you see is what you get, we just plug in and play.

What do Cathedral have planned for the rest of the year?
We've got some festivals coming up, then after that I don't know, its all a Guessing Game.

What would you say your biggest highlight has been for Cathedral so far?
This new record I think and Tony Iommi playing on one of our records, we've met and even toured with some of our favourite bands, so things like that really.

Thanks for your time; do you have a message for your fans reading this?
Thanks for your support over the years because with out there support and buying our records, it would have been hard over the past 20 years, so we appreciate the support, Stay Heavy

Interview By Robert Lawrence