WHO: Cathedral

WHERE: London ULU

WHEN: Thursday, April 29The veteran doom/psychedelic band follow the release of their ninth – and most ambitious – studio album. The Guessing Game, with six shows in the UK and Ireland. Back to back.

“Well, we can cope,” laughs frontman Lee Dorrian, “It would be different it there were 30 dates!”.

The band intend to play quite a lot of songs from the new album, but will also include material spanning their entire career.

“We’ll even be doing something from our first record (1991’s Forest Of Equilibrium), so there’s plenty to choose from, especially when you consider that we’ve also got four EPs, as well as the albums.

“We’ll also have a keyboard player with us for the first time on tour, which is gonna be a challenge. It’s a guy called Munch, who’s the chef at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, we’re we did the new album. He’s also a professional musician. There’s a lot of mellotron on the record, and we’re gonna have one of these onstage in London.”

For Dorrian and the rest of the band – guitarist Gary Jennings, bassist Leo Smee and drummer Brian Dixon – the ULU date is their first headlining gig in London for about six years.

“In fact, I don’t think we’ve done anything in London live since we supported Cradle Of Filth (December 3, 2005 at The Forum). So this is long overdue. We’ll probably aim to do about 75 minutes. There are two other bands on the bill, so there is a time restriction.”

Support comes from Japan’s Church Of Misery and Americans Gates Of Slumber.

“Church Of Misery have been touring around Europe for the last month. Gates Of Slumber were also supposed to be over, so it made sense to get them on the bill with us, However, the latter ended up being affected by the Icelandic volcanic ash problem and have only just over.

“We’ve also tried to make sure that ticket prices are kept down and that we give the fans good support acts. It means a lot to us to provide value for money.”

Apart from London, the rest of the tour shapes up as follows:

April 26: Manchester Academy 3

April 27: Dublin Village

April 28: Belfast Limelight

April 30: Glasgow King Tut’s

May 1: Birmingham Academy 3

Find out more at www.myspace.com/cathedral