Supernatural Birth Machine

Cathedral's fourth album was made by the same four as The Carnival Bizarre: Lee Dorrian on vocals, Garry Jennings on guitar, Leo Smee on bass and Brian Dixon on drums. Kit Woolven produced it, as he had the previous record, and the band went back into Parkgate Studios exactly a year after recording its predecessor. They came to it straight off the best part of a year on the road, with barely any time to prepare, and Dorrian wrote many of the lyrics minutes before singing them. He quit the band days before the sessions, only for the others to carry on regardless, and he has since said he would have been far happier with the album had it been made five or six months later. Toy's Factory, its Japanese label, reported that the members themselves felt they had rushed it. At the time Dorrian called it moodier than The Carnival Bizarre and said some of the songs came out of the band's love of science fiction; "Urko's Conquest" takes its subject from Urko, the gorilla chief of Planet of the Apes. Toy's Factory issued it in Japan on 9 October 1996 with the extra track "Tuckers Ruck", and Earache released it in Britain that month on CD and cassette, where it reached number 15 on the Rock & Metal Albums Chart. Earache's American arm gave the US edition a different sleeve. The cover painting is by Dave Patchett. On the band's visit to Japan in April 1997, their show at ON AIR EAST in Tokyo on the 13th was filmed and released in Japan the next year on the video Our God Has Landed (Live in Tokyo).