Note: There are errors of fact in the following. I will address them in the next installment. It is highly likely there are errors of execution in the writing too. I will correct those if I ever notice them.
Messiah Marcolin is the lead singer on four Candlemass albums: Nightfall (1987), Ancient Dreams (1988), Tales of Creation (1989), and Candlemass (2005). I know that Messiah is not his birth name and I learned from a vocal coach on Youtube that he is good at "vowel modification." And that's is all I know about him, except sometimes he performs dressed like a monk. Which is so metal.
Candlemass is a good way to illustrate the adjectival possibilities of 'metal,' above and beyond the crunchy riffs. "So metal" can be a sincere or ironic description--sometimes both at the same time. Dressing up like a monk in concert at once channels the medieval ethos of the songs while being, well, LARPing. A bleak dour landscape photographed in black and white can both channel the sublime while being a bit much at the same time. And a Swedish band that keeps chugging away at essentially the same sound for 35 years, well....
So anyway, back to dressing like a monk. As I implied above, Nightfall (1987) goes fully medieval. Epicus, due to the "The Sorcerer" and "Black Stone Weilder" sees to me more like a generic fantasy world which is therefore quasi-medival, but this album goes further by bringing in more explicitly Christian (and therefore Satanic) reference points. The prelude track "Gothic Stone" (really an into for ""The Well of Souls") is a good metaphor for the sound of this album. It sounds like a cathedral made out of ballads, marches, and dirges. There are 10 songs listed, but counting the short "Gothic Stone" and exit track "Black Candles," four are instrumentals, including a cover of Chopin's "Funeral March" and "The Codex Gigas," a tribute to a Bible with a giant picture of the devil, prominently featuring the tritone (he said, semi-confidently. The tri-tone is the sequence of notes featured in the song "Black Sabbath" which sounded so evil it was banned by the medieval church.) That's a few too many, but the remaining songs are solid and compare favorably with the six songs on the debut. ("Compare favorably with" doesn't mean "better than" does it? I just mean they fit in with earlier set, though nothing approaches "Solitude.") You do hear Messiah singing the hell out of these songs, particularly his band-debut "Well of Souls" a little ditty about a priest guarding a hellmouth. The other songs on the first side, "At the Gallows End" and "Samarithan," are also stand outs, and both fit the semi-ballad, semi-drinking song quasi-medievalism that I mentioned above. Side two is a bit of a let down for me. People seem to like "Bewitched," but the "You are bewitched" refrain is a cloying irritant. Still, that song, about music possessing its listeners totally is 'so metal,' though the most metal moment of the album is the aforementioned Chopin cover, which seems inevitable by the very existence of the epic doom genre.
The least metal thing about both Nightfall and Ancient Dreams might be the cover art. Both albums are adorned by landscapes by 19th century American painter, Thomas Cole. Nobody ever looked at anything by a Hudson River school painter and thought, "that's so metal," except apparently the boys in Candlemass. Both paintings are from the same series. The Nightfall painting shows a spirit departing the body of a man in a boat. The other is nearly the same lake setting, with the boat on the other side and the hazy outline of the gilded city of Heaven in the sky above. The similar artwork gives the impression that Ancient Dreams is more of the same. That isn't wrong--it's following a similar path but perhaps heading a bit into the power metal direction. I notice the guitar solos more on this one (as Swedish metallers from the 80s you know they're down with Yngwie), some of which are actually fast. (Remember, this is doom. Doom is slow.) I feel that they are considering a change in sound without really undertaking one. Like Nightfall, side two has some low points, but these are much lower. Check these lyrics from the title track: Chase the horizons, catch the illusion/ Remember the child within/There's no tomorrow just sadness and sorrow/Hold on to the ancient dreams." Then if that isn't bad enough, it goes on to list "Great kings and tyrants, unicorns and elf lords/Devils and demons, dungeons and dragons/Phoenix is rising up from the ashes of the wind." Despite the explicit fantasy trappings, I'd argue this isn't adjectivally very metal, mostly cause it doesn't believe in itself. The most metal moment of the album is in fact Messiah's pronunciation of "Father" as "Fahder" in "Darkness in Paradise"--and at the beginning of the very next song.
There are a few ways you can sketch out the general progression of a band's development in stages. One way might be discovering your sound, exploring and developing it, establishing it, and perfecting it, at which point you can refine, repeat, or fizzle out. Thanks to the demos included on the reissues of these albums, I'd say that the discovery phase predates Epicus, which establishes the epic doom sound. If Nightfall perfects with the kind of operatic lead singer Leif envisioned, Ancient Dreams only varies the sound slightly. You might think then that the fourth Candlemas album in four years, Tales of Creation, goes back to the same well (of souls) one time too many. After all, it allegedly dusts a concept Leif had been working on before the debut and even re-records the song "Under the Oak" from the first album. Nonetheless, I kind of like the album. There's some killer riffs and no annoying songs for the first time since Epicus. But the only standout song is the aforementioned "Under the Oak" redux, and there are a few too many spoken word parts (with and without demonic distortions). It's probably true that they were out of ideas, since the band more or less split after that. (*Not exactly true, as I might get into next time (if I remember).) And, because this is a thing I'm doing, the most metal moment of Tales is the title, "Through the Infinitive Halls of Death."
As I'll discuss later, Leif kept the band name alive for a few albums with entirely different line ups. But this line up returned with 2005's eponymous Candlemass. You see the parallel with Johan's return--after a hiatus, the band returns with a prior singer. While Johan was away from the band for 32 years and the band on a break for seven, Messiah's return restarting the band after six years, the singer himself having been gone for 15. "Black Dwarf," as the lead off track, is an awesome way to announce that you're back. It sounds like Candlemass--atmospheric entry, crunchy riff, imprecise supernatural lyrics--but also somehow new (the "power metal" sound I hear in the Lowe albums, including the vocal cadence (weirdly) starts to appear. The producer is in Hammerfall, a power metal band). There's some new depth to Messiah's voice, the lyrics, about an evil black dwarf, I guess, are on point but still unexpected, and it sounds. so. good. It leads right into "Seven Silver Keys," with its ascending, grasping chorus countering the typically down tuned, ponderous riff. On through songs with names like "Assassin of Light" and about things like Copernicus resisting the church, it in the classic metal mold with a slightly updated sound. (Not too updated--I can imagine it was a great joy for people who'd been missing Candlemass during the hiatus.) It's actually the one I knew the best before embarking on this project, since I'd had the CD installed in my car for a time. Despite that, I'm having trouble formulating a "take" on it. It has a good fresh energy but goes on a bit too long. You also have to ask yourself, seeing it is a reunion album following a decade and a half after having apparently run short on ideas, did the world need this? But maybe that's the most metal thing of all.
Is ranking metal? You betcha. My gut says
- Nightfall
- Candlemass
- Tales of Creation
- Ancient Dreams
