Tag: Candlemass

Candlemass – King Of The Grey Islands

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the WeekLeave a comment

Today I’m heading all the way back to 2007, which is somehow 18 years gone. We have a bit of a story to go over on how the legendary Swedish doom outfit Candlemass once again lost their singer, but this time they struck gold in terms of a replacement.

Candlemass – King Of The Grey Islands

Released June 22, 2007 via Nuclear Blast Records

Candlemass have had a whale of a ride, their whole story is pretty fascinating but is far too much to run down on an album post. I’ll pick up around 2004, when the band reunited with their legendary singer Messiah Marcolin for a well-received, self-titled album. As the band convened again in 2006 to record a follow-up, Messiah once again bailed on the group, in an episode the band described as “pre-recording psychosis.” This would be Marcolin’s end with the group, he has not convened with them since this departure (this is scheduled to change in September at a festival in Greece for a one-off reunion show).

Candlemass were left with their principal songwriter and founder Leif Edling on bass, Mats “Mappe” Björkman and Lars Johansson on guitars, and Jan Lindh on drums. Edling began doing vocal demos of their new material with singer Mats Levén, who had a side project with Edling and had also helped out with demos of the reunion album.

Edling had Levén in mind for the vacant singer’s position and Levén would eventually assume it, but there was a detour to take and Levén would not join Candlemass until 2012. The demos from these sessions became available in a box set titled Doomology, a set I have and will discuss at a future point in time.

The detour came in the form of Robert Lowe, singer of acclaimed Texas doom outfit Solitude Aeturnus. I’m recalling this story entirely from memory and hearsay without sources, but as I recall it, Lowe’s wife got in contact with people connected to Candlemass, perhaps Edling himself, and proposed they audition Lowe for the singer’s role. Lowe sent in his work on a few classic Candlemass songs, and Edling was sold. Lowe was hired, did the vocal sessions for the album, and we were off to the races.

Our album today, in its standard configuration, features 10 tracks at a beefy 53:55 runtime. There is a version with bonus tracks, that version is what I will cover today as the bonus stuff is significant and also the one I own. There are other bonus versions available but I will leave those out of what is going to already be a stupidly long post.

Prologue

This is a brief, slightly under one minute long intro piece. Just a simple guitar passage. Nothing to really ponder about here but nothing wrong with it either. Grade: B

Emperor Of The Void

I guess Doom Metal Lesson One is that not every song needs to be slow and mournful, not that Candlemass didn’t already long establish that lesson. This is a massively heavy and relatively fast pounding track that visits, figuratively and/or literally, an old ruler who is decaying away along with his empire. The album’s title comes into play in this tale of mortality crumbling. The guitar solo in this one stands tall above all else, then there is a brief quiet passage before the psychedelic pounding continues. Great work on this one. Grade: A+

Devil Seed

We get a slower paced one here. There are a lot of stoners drawn to doom metal and we don’t want to get them too excited. But what the song lacks in speed it more than makes up for in power. We even get into a bit of gallop in the chorus while still maintaining the 420-friendly tempo. Robert Lowe delivers quite a performance as he sings about someone descending into evil. Grade: A

Of Stars And Smoke

Another bit of a slow burner though not overly so, there is a bit of bite to this one. Heavy as hell yet again and a contemplation of fading away from existence, as nothing in doom metal is bright or cheery. Wonderfully done chorus from Lowe here too. Grade: B+

Demonia 6

This one is faster and quite creepy as the main character enters some ancient evil building and is taken by dark forces. This one does have a slow bridge portion out of the guitar solo but then goes back to the simple yet effective riff that anchors the song. It also goes on a trippy bit at the end. Grade: B+

Destroyer

This one goes slow but also pounds to a pulp with its heaviness. Fitting, as this dark tale speaks of a downtrodden, hellbent person who becomes the destroyer of the world. It is wanton slaughter brought by a mindless, hateful killer as opposed to an evil mastermind. The song maintains its form until the last few minutes where it goes in a doom-laden instrumental passage. Grade: A

Man Of Shadows

This one moves more mid-tempo and very much reminds me of something Robert Lowe’s other band Solitude Aeturnus would do. That similarity might come from his presence, of course. This song shifts form a few times through its six minutes, offering up a buffet of doom excellence. Grade: A

Clearsight

This one also sounds familiar, as its faster guitar romp is straight out of the classic Candlemass playbook. The song deals with a ship whose crew sailed to the edges of the world looking for some unnamed thing. The find is never made and the ship becomes a ghost ship, haunting the desolate seas. Grade: B+

The Opal City

This is another instrumental and again a brief one, at just 1:12. It’s a powerful riff and sets a nice atmosphere, but again it’s just a bit piece. Grade: B

Embracing The Styx

We close the standard album with a sweeping and powerful statement, both musically and lyrically. This one slams its way through heavy and haunting guitar work, riffing hard as razors when it needs to and letting in some atmosphere at other points. This has a bit of a bass passage from Leif Edling before resuming the guitar beating. The song is a morose tale of someone welcoming the embrace of death, using the famed River Styx and its ferryman Charon as imagery to mark the narrator’s voluntary transition to the afterlife. Grade: A+

That wraps up the main album. I will briefly discuss the version with two bonus tracks. The bonuses are re-recordings of two Candlemass standards, Solitude and At The Gallows End. The first song is originally from the debut album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus while the second hails from the band’s classic Nightfall.

Both of these takes with Robert Lowe are fantastic and are some of the best versions of the songs I’ve ever heard. That’s saying something too, as there are several versions of both with a variety of different singers, both live and studio retakes. These songs are also not officially available much of anywhere besides on the physical CD release, it is something I would highly advise people to seek out if interested.

Candlemass entered a new era with Robert Lowe behind the mic. Some fans were vocally upset that the legendary group was forging on without the band’s signature singer Messiah Marcolin, but others including me were ecstatic at Lowe’s involvement. This was a doom metal royalty marriage made in heaven, or hell, I don’t know, but it worked splendidly. Lowe would remain in the band until 2012, with two more albums issued.

This album is extremely easy for me to grade. It is excellent from front to back, with nothing weak or “secondary” on its tracklist. The music is crushing, Robert Lowe sounds amazing and this pairing fit like a hand in a glove.

Album Grade: A

Candlemass had many twists and turns to get to this point in their career, and years later would see another odd series of twists and turns. Their story is quite unlikely and compelling. But this particular fork in the road is an excellent place to stop and enjoy the crushing tones of the doom metal pioneers.

Picking Five Songs From 1988

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year3 Comments

We are now to 1988 on this long-running series where I pick five of my favorite songs from a year. Yes, this will run all the way through this year. I imagine this will bleed into next year at this point since I took a good chunk of the early year off, so I’ll go ahead and pick five from ’25 as well.

But we’re a long damn ways away from that. Today we head to 1988. Rock was still running strong in its hair phase, though time was running out on the art form. Things were getting heavier and heavier on the metal end of things, as what we now know as extreme metal saw regular releases in ’88 and beyond. While I do love some 1980’s pop, I had kind of moved away from it by this point and was far more entrenched in the rock and metal end of things. By the time we get to the 2000’s, many of you may not recognize anything I post. But, again, we’re not there yet.

It is 1988, at least for a few minutes around here. Here are five of my favorite songs from the year (as always, not necessarily my five favorite, just five of my favorites). Enjoy.

Queensrÿche – Eyes Of A Stranger

Starting off with the final track of what is my favorite album of all time. Operation: Mindcrime is a metal “opera” with a ton of political intrigue, murder and suspense, and Eyes Of A Stranger wraps up the album better than pretty much any ending to anything in history. The main charcter Nikki is locked up in a prison mental institution, left to recall the sordid events of the album in a drugged-up haze. The production on this song and album is absolutely perfect, and the song’s drive and melody are otherworldly, as is of course the vocal performance of Geoff Tate. There are few finer examples of a song around.

Death – Pull The Plug

Death metal had been on the scene for a few years, and by ’88 it was really getting into gear. Leave it to the namesake band to deliver an all-time classic. This “thrash on steroids” delivered a savage beating to the eardrums of metalheads brave enough to move beyond the mainstream. While Death would go on to become a technical powerhouse, Pull The Plug is some good meat and potatoes, basic death metal.

Bathory – A Fine Day To Die

From Bathory’s fourth album Blood Fire Death, this saw Quorthon blend his now patented black metal with more melodic influences, eventually coining the term Viking metal. This song is an epic journey told through a group who are facing their likely end in battle. It’s a massive song that inspires even my sedentary ass to get up and strive for Valhalla.

Candlemass – Mirror Mirror

And now time for a little doom. Candlemass of Sweden had cut their third album by this point and were in the middle of an arc that is now considered hallowed in the pantheon of doom metal. While doom is traditionally slower, this is one of several Candlemass songs that runs at a faster clip at times. It’s an enchanting track about a cursed mirror that swallows the souls of whoever peers into it. The song is aided immensely by the power and range of the “mad monk” Messiah Marcolin, a true treasure of metal vocals.

Iron Maiden – The Evil That Men Do

And we wrap up with another Iron Maiden song. This one hails from Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, which as I’ve relayed in the past is my favorite Maiden album. The song itself has a few complexities musically but is honestly one of the “simpler” tracks from the album. It is a forward, speedy driver and doesn’t let up throughout. Lyrically it is quite complex, as it deals with the album’s story of a child born of the Devil who gets up to some shit. This song is just before the child’s birth, if I’m recalling the story correctly.

That covers 1988. We are only one year away from putting a bow on the grand decade of the 1980’s. Things really do switch up after we enter the next decade.

And before I go, another quick programming note – I will continue this weekly posting format for what seems to be another four weeks, if I’m counting right. It’ll be a song and also this post, and perhaps another post in the middle of the week. I will run like this up until July 5, which is slated to be Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert. I do intend to livestream that event and I will provide a recap of it that following Monday. The week after that I will return to posting albums on Mondays, and I actually have a backlog going at this point so I should be able to keep up. ‘Till then.

Candlemass – Solitude (Song of the Week)

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week3 Comments

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 20th 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.