STL #124: The Years in Reading, 2018 & 2019

 Again, lists recovered from a notebook. The were both ranked, and I didn't change the order even when it felt "wrong." The comments, such as they are, added in 2021. 

2018

1. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Co-listed with Pastoralia and Lincoln in the Bardo, so George Saunders was my writer of the year.
2. The Southern Reach Trilogy. I think these will be emblematic of this time. Annihilation is almost certainly the best. 
3. Lone Wolf and Cub. The whole thing. The bad guy is revealed like 10 volumes in and there's a sword fight that must last 1,000 pages.
4. Stamped from the Beginning. Shockingly persuasive.
5. Factfulness. A few years later I remember this as neoliberal propaganda. 
6. American Pastoral. I was into mid- to late- period Philip Roth at the time. 
7. Swallows and Amazons. Classic children's adventure. Will eventually read sequels.
8. Ms. Marvel/Bitch Planet. Not the most natural pair, maybe, the two best comics series I read. 
9. The Dispossessed. Flawed, sure, but emblematic of the best social science fiction.
10. The Red Parts. After reading Jane. One of the best true crime books.

2019

1. Hip Hop Family Tree/The Rap Yearbook. Seem like an odd choice for number one now, but I did get into early hip hop (and even 90s hip hop, really for the first time) as a result. 
2. Barnaby. Again, weird to see it so high now. Though I certainly like it. 
3. Our Band Could Be Your Life/Please Kill Me/Celebrated Summer. The third of this is a pretty graphic album thrown in only for thematic purposes. The other two have stuck with me.
4. "LeFanu/James" is what it said. I reread the book that included "Carmilla" (LeFanu) and I think that "James" is M.R. James. 
5. Comeback. I think this marks the beginning of the end of my rereading of the Parker novels in order. This was the first of the great sequence after his long break. I honestly don't know which one this is (maybe the riverboat job), but that is my favorite sequence. 
6. Parable of the Sower/Talents. Obviously these are good books, but I'm not as enthusiastic as some others.
7. Astro City. I love these comics. 
8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes/I, Robot. A natural pair of puzzle fictions.
9. Best of the Best American Horror. Condensed from the first ten years of Ellen Datlow's annual series. 
10. Say Nothing. One of the best true crime books. 

Curio: Archie Horror

 I have sitting on my desk a handwritten, ranked list of every Archie Horror comic inclusive of Afterlife With Archie (not originally under the imprint). 

1. Afterlife With Archie- The best title, best art, best script. RIP Betty Cooper. Unfortunately, the series broke off in the middle, with a great interlude featuring Josie as a cosmopolitan vampire. 
2. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina- Highly metal. Like a Gold Key adaptation of a Hammer horror. Sadly, only 8 issues. Betty and Veronica as Wiccan cheerleaders from one town over.
3. Blossom 666. Third best title. Cheryl and Jason Blossom's sibling rivalry over who is really the anti-Christ. Evidently written as a pitch as it ends on a cliff-hanger. 
4. Vampironica- A fantasia on her insecurities is top notch writing. Flattened, semi-painting art with excellent facial expressions. Not crazy about character design though. Fingerless gloves.
5. Vampironica: New Blood- Follows up on the implications of the next item on the list, so kudos on that. Also points for a hardcore seem with Ronnie's vampiric ancestor, Sir Francis Lodge, fighting a great white shark. 
6. Jughead the Hunger vs. Vampironica- Respect for thinking of a cross-over for something that really, really didn't need to happen. 
7. Jughead the Hunger - Best name. Horrible art, treats the Cooper family like Duck Dynasty. This one actually continues for multiple volumes, but one was enough. 

STL 123.4 The Vikstrom Interlude

 This is post number 123, part 4, about the band's 5th studio album, titled Chapter VI. How many points is that in Yahtzee? Chapter VI  is a beautiful name for any even somewhat Spinal Tappish band's fifth album, but to be fair they did have a double live album with Messiah that I'm skipping.  This is the only album featuring Thomas Vikstrom on vocals, and I hate it. 

Maybe it's at this point I should stop and say that despite all the time I've put into this project, Candlemass isn't my kind of band. I mean, obviously I like some of the things they've done, and some of the attributes of their sound are profoundly appealing But as I'm coming to understand it, the epic doom they are inextricably associated with is in essence in the overlap of the true, the actual, the good doom (i.e., basements dank with bong fumes) and a shinier power metal sound (blowdryers and stadium dreams). This album, as I'll elaborate on, falls too far to the latter, uninteresting, end of the spectrum. 

The other thing that I hope would go without saying is that I'd like these to be more than "reaction video" criticism.  If you look up "Candlemass reaction video" on Youtube, you'll find out what hip hop fans, goth girls, and self-appointed Christians think of the band's music. (And as I mentioned before, a vocal coach.) Even though I'm not putting in much research time, I do spend time with the music (not as implied by how long this is taking to finish though!) and in writing these.... reviews? essays? indulgent utterances?

Now, to return to my first point, this really isn't the kind of thing I like. There's glam riffs, there's soaring synth solos (that are actually kind of cool), and there's a singer who is histrionic and never mentions demons (the latter being a Leif problem, but still). One problem with the songwriting on this album is the implication that other, presumably real,  humans exist. This is most problematic in most prominently in "Julie Laughs No More." The lyrics invoke fairy tales, but in a metaphorical way. Very undoom.  

Listening this album in the wake of white nationalist insurrection in the nation's capitol was not the most woke thing I could have done. Now, Candlemass have never been associated with the deplorable elements of metal, but then I come to "Where the Runes Still Speak"  (sounding little bit like the good stuff, with the riff and keyboard textures) and this bit about "my blood.. calling from Asaland" put me on high alert. The appropriation of things Nordic by racists is both predictable and nauseating, and perhaps a topic I should expand on elsewhere. But then the idea that this is really about something else is cast aside with "I am the moongod/who dwelleth among the dead" and everything's ok. 

Now, to return to my second point, I feel some kind of obligation to do this right, even though no one is paying me for this and very, very few people will read it.  I see my due diligence as the following: listen through once to get the lay of the land, listen again reading lyrics,  listen at least 2 more times roaming the northern forests.  (That's really not enough, but see point one.) I couldn't quite get to that final run through though. 

What did I learn? Maybe trying to break a glass with your voice twice in the same chorus isn't the right move in certain situations. 

There's only one album to rank. It comes in last.  

STL 123.3: The coming of Messiah and Messiah's coming back

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

1. Nightfall
2. Candlemass
3. Tales of Creation
4. Ancient Dreams

That apparently prioritizes (slight) innovation, represented by Nightfall, over (highly relative) perfection of craft of Tales but puts competence (Tales) over embarrassment (moments of Dreams). Or something.  What ever it means, I'll probably not listen to any of them from beginning to end again, except probably Nightfall.

STL 123.2: Candlemass cont'd: the Lowe era ("blessed are the children of doom")

 In continuing my singer-centric assessment of Candlemass, I was faced with an interesting procedural choice. Since Johan was the first and is the latest lead singer, I could either move forward to Messiah or backwards to Robert Lowe (not that one). I chose to step back to the trio of albums with Lowe to keep myself from falling into conventional narratives about old bands with new singers. Namely, "bold new direction," "pointless continuation," (similar to "desperate for cash" and "let's play the casino circuit") and "can't really tell the difference" aka "simple repetition."

Robert Lowe, of Solitude Aeturnus, is the kind of “good singer” venerated in certain metal circles--the kind vocal coaches do reaction videos to and say nice things about their technique. I'm pretty sure he is the first non-Scandi member of the band, and coming from the only other 'big' epic doom band I would tend to see him as a hired gun--the kind of singer Leif would have loved to snag for Epicus.

The best of this lot is easily The Grey King (2007). After an acoustic "Prologue," it really starts to burn with "Emporer of the Void." It seems to be a concept album about, well, the king of "the great islands of grey," whoever that would be. The theme is lost power, but there's no power lost in them tasty riffs and compact psuedo-psych solos. Lowe serves as narrator of this suite of first-person songs, and he does have a nice range of expression--not just all balls-out wailing but a range of vocalizations included some tasteful multi-tracking and bitten off, snarled lines, along with soaring melody and sustain. (Since I don't have the technical knowledge or even a vocal coach's reaction to crib off of, that's all just... words, really.)

Even though there's a native English speaker singing, Leif apparently remains the only lyricist. There's something off throughout--maybe going for an updated approach or something? That really shouldn't matter, as metal generally isn't noted for sophisticated word play. But there is one misstep that really annoyed me the first few listens that I never have been able to get over. The final song repeats its title as a refrain: "Embracing the Styx" (sounding a lot like the much earlier "You are bewitched," it so happens.) Evoking the river of death seems on point and the right kind of coloration for doom. Unfortunately, it sounds exactly like "embracing the sticks," which is what I thought it was for the first several listens--an absurdly awkward image. Even after I saw the written song title I thought "you can't embrace a river," though that's kind of the point, as in this final song the king opens his wrists so the blood might mingle with the water. It turns out that this is a strong track, but my early misapprehension continues to mar my appreciation of it.

Next comes Death Magic Doom (2009). This is a little more power-metal than The Grey King and a lot more so than Epicus. There’s a little swagger in it, the barest hint of groove/nu metal (i.e., gruve metal--Lowe even says, “we’re gonna groove” in the opener, “If I Ever Die.”) That non-hit is immediately followed by the tolling of a funeral bell over a slow downtuned, ultra-Sabbathy riff in “The Hammer of Doom,” thus establishing the dominant mode. We see other standby motifs, like the sea monster in "Demon of the Deep." This album ends with a track repeated from a live set. This song, "Lucifer Rising," is actually the Candlemass song I have heard more than any other, because I added it to my 13 Songs for Satan playlist. It praises the dark lord in a Dio-esque Egyptian setting and features the beatitude, "blessed are the children of doom." There is an effect called "simple repetition" that shows that, all else being equal, people like songs they've heard more often better. That was true for a long time with me and this song, but to tell the truth the super-repetition within the song itself has finally gotten to me. It repeats the chorus "Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer Rising" (that's the whole chorus) 20 times in a sub-4 minute song. 

By contrast, the first track of Psalms for the Dead (2012), "Prophet," repeats the title 13 times in 6 minutes, and that seems like a lot! This record feels like they're continuing the doom/power-metal balance, though they introduce an element I don’t normally associate with the band at all--humor. 

There's a cheesy 50's horror movie woo-oo-oo effect on "The Sound of Dying Demons," and while the narrative of "Dancing of the Temple of the Mad Queen Bee)" is told in apparent earnestness, I have to imagine there's humorous intent. And while it's not exactly humor, "Killing of the Sun" quotes "Iron Man" while the lyrics of "Siren Song" invokes the "gallows pole" (rhyming it with "the sirens will suck on your soul" which, I think, is humorous(?)). "Siren Song" has some jamming keyboard too.

The last track, "Black as Time," deserves some attention if for no other reason than it was the final Candlemass song from 2012 to 2019.  It starts with a basic ticking clock other an ersatz Monty Python monologue about the duplicitousness of Time--"it does not give a shit... Time is death." After almost two minutes of this, we get back to a fast-paced gallop resolving itself into a bludgeoning "TIME IS BLACK" refrain. Then a short bass solo leads into a long guitar solo before the return of the ooky-spooky 50s horror keyboard effect from "Dying Demons." We go back to the monologue--Time is the master of Doom! for a bit, before going on to the bridge and back, to "TIME IS BLACK--BLACK AS THE SUN--TIME IS BLACK--BLACK AS TIME--BLACK AS TIME" fading under the return of the tick tock. And then it's over--the song, the album, Lowe's run, and, for a while, Candlemass itself. 
The tone of this track reflects the perplexing tone of the record as a whole--it would seem to be funny, but rendered so sincerely you wind up questioning yourself. 

So I wrote this as a chronology, but in the end decided the actual ranking is 

1. The King of the Grey Islands
2. Psalms for the Dead
3. Death Magic Doom

King is the only one I'm likely to listen to again, and the only one to even remotely contend with Epicus. 

Curio: Favorite Singers, Rock Idiom

I scribbled out a list of my favorite "rock" singers quite some time ago, and it has just been sitting around. I don't know what I mean by "rock," except for not Kiri Te Kanawa or Ella Fitzgerald. 

I like their singing better than their music: Sarah McLachlan Ronnie James Dio Paul Rogers Bob Seger Macy Gray 

Their singing makes their music better: Al Green Otis Redding Van Morrison Dusty Springfield Rod Stewart 

"Featured female vocalists": Beth Orton Beth Gibbons Tori Amos Chan Marshall 

Three-in-one: Levon Helm Richard Manuel Rick Danko 

Interesting limitations Tom Waits Bob Dylan 

And then there's Chuck D Frank Sinatra Ella Nina Simone Charlie Rich Emmylou Harris Gillian Welch Kelly Willis Sandy Denny Aretha Franklin Axl Rose Tracy Thorne Marvin Gaye Freddie Mercury 

STL #123.1: Ambassadors of Doom

 If I realized I'd be returning from the dead, so to speak, with post #123, I might have planned something more... sequential. But doom metal goes with the resurrection theme at least. Long story short, I've decided to break my silence with an idea that strikes me as stupid and beautiful--ranking the albums of the Swedish epic doom band Candlemass by singer. While I do find this a beautifully stupid idea, I'm having trouble explaining the appeal. I hope I'll figure it along the way, so by the time you get to the end of this I will figure out what I actually have to say.

123.1 If you want a history of Candlemass, go to Wikipedia and then Encylopedia Metallum. There, you'll learn Johan Langquist was the first singer for the band (with Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in 1986) and has returned to become the latest (with Door to Doom in 2019).  This is kind of like Paul Dianno coming back to front Iron Maiden after all these year, provided that the first Maiden albums had been stone classics which Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind and the rest just didn't live up to. 

Pitting these two against each other is not a fair fight. Epicus is unassailable. That first album is a genre-establishing classic. There were a few bands who based their sound on Black Sabbath already, but the great innovation of bassist and mastermind Lars Edling was to cross seventies Sabbath with eighties Sabbath. (That sounds like a bullshit statement to me. I'm not sure if it's supportable or even what it means.) Lars couldn't find the singer who had the sound for his vision (apparently he is a singer himself, of too limited range). Johan was hired as a guest musician and given a few weeks to learn the songs. (Is there another album in metal, or rock or pop for that matter, which lists both the lead singer and lead guitarist as guests? Makes you wonder what "lead" means!) Compared to his replacements (we will get them later, of course), Johan does have some technical limitations, and his voice is awash with echoes and layering in Epicus. He's not at all bad, and I think the record would have been just fine if they'd just let him sing. Instead (and like Dianno, mentioned above), he is limited singer asked to sing in an opera (Also like Dianno, he was replaced by a succession of more technically proficient singers.)

There are many bands who never live up to their first album, but Candlemass never lived up to their first song, "Solitude." The initial vocal line is doubled and echoed, but Johan imbues real sense of desperation and death-love into the suicidal lyrics. The “Earth to earth” bridge gets me every time, the riff, oh my dark lord the riff, by long-time member Mappe Bjorkman, is one of the heaviest in existence.  In “Demon’s Gate” the initial cheesy vocal effects (and lyrics: the distorted demon vocals say Beyond all nightmares I met my fate/an ancient passage surrounded by hate") and the heavy synth are forgiven once you get to the riff and those blasting, jackhammer drums. The song includes the first explicit use of the word "doom": "The place is cursed by the hands of doom." A little later on, it tries a little bass and drums break before one of the many pick-slides on the album and before it ends, the Arabic textures return in a guitar solo and so do the distorted demon vox end. The next song, “Crysal Ball” doubles down on the cheesy lyrics, with the couplet "Gaze into the crystal, see what it tells/It can bring you all fortune, do you so well."  Leif is, I believe, responsible for all Candlemass lyrics, and they often sound like they were written by a Swedish teen pulling Cs in English who's obsessed with the Monster Manual.  (I assume this was the case.) The lyrics tend to be a mishmash of a light variety of Satanism and mythology (the river Styx shows up alot). They mostly just set the mood for doom, but sometimes stumble into something interesting. “Black Stone Wielder” invents, I guess, a dark figure with a black stone that functions as the opposite of the Star of Bethlehem. I guess. As long as lyricist Lars can avoid embarrassment, populate the songs with wizards and devils, and occasionally throw in a cool sounding line like “The Devil gives and evil takes,” he is doing his job.

As a head-to-head matchup, Door hasn’t a chance. It’s a good record though. Johann’s vocals are controlled throughout this album. I lack the technical knowledge to be any more specific, but his singing seems held in. He doesn’t reach too far and so he doesn’t fall on his face--like the more subdued aspects of Ian Gillian.  Although it reunites three members from the debut (Langquist, Eiflung, and rhythm guitarist Mappe Bjorkman), Candlemass has updated their sound over the years--the galloping rhythm and choir vocals in “Splendor Demon Majesty” suggest the influence of power metal, as does the clanky anvil percussion in the second track, “Under the Ocean.”  But as far as doomy maneuvers go, getting Tony Iommi to do a guest solo is about as good as you can do. That solo, on the crushing “Astorolus,” starts underwater and emerges like a giant octopus from underwater, pulling sailors from the decks of their ships.  

Songs in the back half continue the updated “doom but new” sound.  “Death Wheel” has a nice bridge and lovely, two part guitar solo that ends with a fuzz second part accompanied by-- flute?  “Black Trinity” carries on in the tradition of ‘devil shit is so cool’ shared by “Splendor Demo Majesty” and, you'd be forgiven for thinking, most Candlemass songs. The evil trinity is referred to as  “the ambassadors of doom,” which just about explains the continuing existence of this band. The purpose of Candlemass is to doom. Not only are they the self-appointed “ambassadors of doom,” but they live in “The House of Doom” (the title of the penultimate track, which presumably has the Door to Doom on the front--painted black) and belong to the “club of doom” (in the the finale, “The Omega Circle.”) By the end of this album, I feel like I’ve had enough, and in fact, apart from “Under the Ocean” and “Astorolus,” I’m unlikely to listen to this album much again.

Next time, I'll step back one singer (or forward four) and consider the three albums with Robert Lowe.