This week’s songs presents an interesting perspective with it – Candlemass have been playing for decades now and have had several membership changes. As a result, there is a massive supply of live and alternate recordings of this song available to go through. It’s quite a history which, of course, I’ll get right into.

Solitude is the opening track to Candlemass’ debut album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. The album was released in 1986 and did not sell well out of the gate, leading the band to be dropped from the small-time record label they were signed to. Singer Johan Längqvist would quit the group without ever performing a single concert, a distinction that was a curiosity in metal trivia and would last over 20 years.

Candlemass would soon see their fortunes buoy – they were joined at vocals by the voice and character of Messiah Marcolin and they’d go on a run of three albums that would help define the landscape of doom metal at a time when the genre was little more than whatever Black Sabbath had done. As the profile of Candlemass rose, so did the sales of the debut album. With this, many new fans took notice of Solitude and the song grew to become one of the band’s signature tunes.

This song is a recording by a doom metal band and as such it is a “sad” song. The music is suitably slow and morose – while a lot of heavy metal was caught up in pushing the envelope of thrash, Candlemass and a few others were exploring the territory that would become doom.

Lyrically, Solitude goes well beyond just being a sad song – this is a desperate track about someone at their total wit’s end who is contemplating suicide. This is the final words of a tortured soul who simply wishes to pass in peace – there is no hope or anything greater to reach for here. Candlemass didn’t have a high enough profile for the song to be picketed by the “moral majority” in the same way a lot of metal music got twisted as encouragements of suicide, which is a bit ironic since this song is very much a bleak and open portrayal of such circumstances while the media-fueled witch hunts were targeting songs not really about suicide.

As Candlemass wound on with their career, Solitude has gone on to see several versions released. By a very quick count I can identify at least 10 versions across different official live releases, as well as 2 more live and one demo session from a rarities box set. Additionally, the song was re-recorded in studio in 2007 when new singer Robert Lowe joined the band and was released on his first album with the group, King Of The Grey Islands. And I’ll hold that version up as an awesome rendition and, at the risk of blasphemy, perhaps the definitive version of the song.

Earlier I mentioned how original singer Johan Längqvist did not sing Solitude with the band, or any song as he didn’t perform live at all with them before quitting. This was corrected in 2007 when the band celebrated a slightly late 20^th anniversary by having Johan join them for a handful of songs live. He would link up with Candlemass on a few other occasions through the 2010’s before fully re-joining as singer in 2018. It was a true case of coming full circle.

Solitude is often hailed as Candlemass’ magnum opus, and even in debate it’s a top 2 or 3 pick. This was from a time when a scene could take years to form, when having a soft selling debut didn’t necessarily mean the death of the band, and when word of mouth and snail mail were the ways music spread across the world. Now nearly 30 years on from its release, Solitude is still just as haunting and soul-wrenching as it was back in 1986.