“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”

- William Shakespeare

The Reverend is dead. All hail the Reverend.

And I mean this by showing respect posthumously, there are no successors. It feels strange to be describing a band that in its death throes is releasing music. A band that is officially stated as being demised. What strange phantasmagoria is this? Strange indeed. Or better perhaps, bizarre. Yes, the Reverend – the entity of contradictions – lived and died true to its name.

I say this because the band born in 1995 had such clear vision and boundaries, one could as well call it a personality. Hence entity. Or egregore. An egregore is defined as being a psychic entity made of thoughts of a group of people – and said to manifest when, for example, a project “takes on a life of it’s own”.

Reverend Bizarre was Doom. It was a pure example of genre-religious musical supremacy. Following uncompromisingly the laden road of Doom after such names as Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus and Pentagram, the Reverend had a clear path to be treaded, paying no heed to the ever-shifting trends, but in its way paying homage to the great ones before. Such is a behavioral pattern suited for a band that will most likely achieve a cult status. And that it did. The band that achieved a cult status also made the Finnish official single charts. Contradictory, dear Watson? A doom single, Holmes?

Yes, “Slave of Satan” debuted at #2, which is an astounding achievement as the song surpasses 20 minutes. No small feat, that one. Even more amazing is the fact that another single, the sixteen-minute “Teutonic Witch”, debuted the same charts at #1 this very Spring. And I kid you not, the band has also received airplay due to the mysterious circumstances leading to their charts-fame. Yes, they have played doom metal in Finnish national radio.

As all things must come to an end, so did Reverend Bizarre, at what could have been called the height of their career. The band played their last performance in December 2006, and announced it will cease its existence after the release of one more album. This album is entitled merrily “So Long Suckers”, and it comes in two discs. A long farewell, befitting the band perfectly. This postmortal requiem consists of 130 minutes of puritanist doom, as excellent as ever, and was quoted by Albert Witchfinder himself to possibly be their best work ever. A worthy opus left in passing, then.

The trio responsible for the creation of the bizarre reverend depart, and each one following their own paths to be. The group has dismantled, but the legacy remains. And the Reverend? The Reverend is dead. Right?