A double album is always a curious read, and Cathedral’s ninth full-length, The Guessing Game, with which the legendary UK doom outfit celebrates their 20th anniversary, is no exception. All the more so considering The Guessing Game is so close to the 80-minute limit of what would fit on a regular compact disc that, if the band had nixed the two two-and-a-half-minute intros, the record would have fit easily. So it’s not like they’ve come up with such an abundance of material as a follow-up to 2005’s The Garden of Unearthly Delights, but the jeans are just a little too tight to hold what they’ve got. I think we’ve all been there at one time or another.

Please don’t take that as calling The Guessing Game bloated. As one of the bands who set the course for the genre of traditional doom with classic albums like 1993’s The Ethereal Mirror and 1995’s The Carnival Bizarre, they know what it takes to make a good record, and although I generally fall on the side of cut what you need to to make it work — to the point of agreeing with George Martin that The White Album should have been a single disc (would the world really miss “Rocky Raccoon” or “Revolution No. 9?”) — if after two decades of existence, Cathedral want to make a 2CD, I’m not about to fault them for doing so. After five years, I’m just happy to have a new record. Any issue of how to interpret whether to take it as one whole work or two separate albums is secondary to that. Maybe that’s The Guessing Game.

In any case, the remaining original and principal members of the band, vocalist Lee Dorrian (whose back story by now shouldn’t need retelling) and guitarist Garry “Gaz” Jennings, both give remarkable performances throughout The Guessing Game. From “Funeral of Dreams” and down the line of the first disc’s material, Dorrian’s voice is a constant high point. Even as “Funeral of Dreams” pays bizarre homage to ritualistic ‘70s prog — think bands like Black Widow and Coven — Dorrian stays in character and on point vocally. And it’s a hearty “holy shit” moment nearly every time Jennings kicks into a solo, perhaps most especially on “Painting in the Dark.”

Cathedral has always worked a good dose of “weird” into their sound, so although “Funeral of Dreams” is jarring because it’s the first track (following the intro, “Immaculate Misconception”), it would be hard for it to be out of place, even next to the more rocking “Painting in the Dark,” which itself is followed by another change in “Death of an Anarchist,” which grooves slower and introduces a mellotron to amp up the prog feel and tie in with the following instrumental title track, where it’s more heavily featured (at three minutes, this could have been the intro for a single-disc version of the album and it would have worked really well leading into the heavy beginning of “Funeral of Dreams”). “Edwige’s Eyes” has a classic Cathedral feel and puts The Guessing Game’s most Sabbathian riff yet to good use in the chorus. Were it my job to pick a single, I might go with this one, since it’s got a memorable hook and is solid doom for all of its seven-minute duration.

Disc one ends in more ‘70s prog quirkiness, coming in the form of “Cats, Incense, Candles and Wine.” Where “Funeral of Dreams” took one aspect of those seminal acid rocking days — namely the ritual — “Cats, Incense, Candle and Wine” is more of the whole package. Again, Dorrian’s voice adjusts well. The Garden of Unearthly Delights was an engrossing but not really ambitious record. With all its sonic twists and turns, The Guessing Game has a clear striving sense that’s refreshing to consider in the context of the band’s 20 years. Perhaps the reason Dorrian and Jennings have been able to work together for so long is they’ve always wanted to try new things. Without lapsing into some kind of marriage-counseling tone, that’s obviously important to make any creative relationship work as well as theirs has.

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