John Carpenter’s ‘Cathedral’ Album And Graphic Novel Arrive This August

John Carpenter is taking his talents back to the world of audio and narrative storytelling, but its not a movie. This time he’s making a combo album and graphic novel called Cathedral. The new album releases on August 7th, 2026 on Sacred Bones Records alongside his first-ever graphic novel, which releases on August 4th, 2026 from Storm King Comics.

The first single from the new album, “Lord of the Underground” is out now and available wherever you listen to your music. Check out the visualizer below.

Each track on the Cathedral album is set to go as a chapter in the graphic novel. The novel unfolds like a flim and really feels like the closest thing we’re going to get to a new movie from John Carpenter. Here’s what he had to say about the project.

“It was so cinematic and vivid,” Carpenter says of the dream that inspired the story. “I thought, ‘I have to score this.’ It’s kind of our first heavy metal album.”

Carpenter had a dream in 2024 and that dream ended up as the basis for the story of Cathedral. The story centers on an abandoned church in downtown Los Angeles that shifts from a forgotten building to the site of a waking nightmare. After the killing of a police officer draws attention to the long-ignored cathedral, Lieutenant Christine Marks and detectives Paul Hernandez and Steve Mayfield are pulled into an investigation that leads them deep into its catacombs and toward a centuries-old evil imprisoned within.

“The story informed everything,” says longtime musical collaborator Daniel Davies of the album. “John would describe a scene and say, ‘We need a heavy riff here.’ We didn’t set out to make a metal record, but it evolved that way.”

Carpenter is joined by Davies and Cody Carpenter, continuing a partnership that spans the Lost Themes album series, the recent Halloween films, and multiple reworkings of Carpenter’s classic scores. On Cathedral, the trio leans into a heavier, more aggressive palette without losing the tension and atmosphere that define Carpenter’s sound.

Whereas the Lost Themes albums were written as scores to movies of the mind, Cathedral scores the first original graphic novel written by Carpenter, in collaboration with his wife and long-time creative partner, producer and editor Sandy King, and writer Sean Sobczak, fleshed out by illustrators Federico De Luca and Luis Guaragna, colored by Sian Mandrake, and lettered by Marshall Dillon. Fans can get a first peek of its look via the visualizer for “Lord Of The Underground” out today and its first chapter, as featured in John Carpenter’s anthology Tales For A HalloweeNight Vol 11.

While the Cathedral album was crafted to be listened to as one reads the graphic novel, it was important to Carpenter that the music stand on its own. “That’s first and foremost,” the director says. “It’s all about making the music work. This is somewhat different sounding stuff that we’ve done, but it’s done with the same desire in mind,” he adds. “In other words, put this thing on and imagine you’re watching a movie. That’s what we want you to do.”  

PRE-ORDER / PRE-SAVE CATHEDRAL SOUNDTRACK

PRE-ORDER CATHEDRAL GRAPHIC NOVEL

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