Lee Dorrian

Lee Dorrian — born in England in 1968 — was Napalm Death's singer in grindcore's founding phase, and then took the most radical path possible: he founded a band devoted to the slowest music he could play. He sang on part of Scum (1987) and on From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988), records of tracks lasting seconds, maximum speed and complete refusal of form. His voice there is a constant roar, without melodic articulation, working as texture inside the noise. He left in 1989 and created Cathedral, a doom metal band whose first records operate at the opposite extreme: dragging tempos, riffs that take whole bars to complete a phrase, a heavy and oppressive atmosphere. To go from the fastest music ever recorded to the slowest, in two years, is a trajectory without parallel. His greater contribution, however, may lie off the stage. He founded the label Rise Above Records, which released and projected a whole generation of British doom, stoner and heavy rock bands, becoming one of the genre's most influential independent labels. The lyrics of Napalm Death and Cathedral share an origin: the British anarcho-punk scene of the 1980s, from which come the political critique and the refusal of the industry the band kept up for decades.