Introduction

DOOMED FOR LIVE (2002)
1) Mirror Mirror; 2) Bewitched; 3) Dark Are The Veils Of Death; 4) Demon's Gate; 5) Under The Oak; 6) At The Gallows End; 7) Samarithan; 8) Dark Reflections; 9) Mourner's Lament; 10) Black Stone Wielder; 11) The Well Of Souls; 12) A Sorcerer's Pledge; 13) Bearer Of Pain; 14) Ancient Dreams; 15) Somewhere In Nowhere; 16) Solitude; 17) Crystal Ball.
Har har har, it's 2002 and the world still has not run out of lame puns for live album titles. More than that, the world still has a place for good old Candlemass — as Edling's interesting, but some­what atypical fiddlings with the name of the band come to a close, the classic Nightfall lineup finally reunites as Messiah Marcolin realizes that no other metal project brings so much fame to his name as Candlemass.
The first result of this reunion is more of symbolic than genuine importance: a live record (and video), to show the world that the old school of 1987 is still around and that it kick any of those metallic youngsters' asses at a moment's notice. But that's about all it does, really. Eleven out of seventeen tracks are the same songs that already were present on the Live album — apparently, the band does not care much about hunting for dark horses, or, perhaps, in this case they thought that it was far more important to whip up the classics, for any potential new fans. Thus, we have all of Epicus Doomicus reproduced here (although ʽBlack Stone Wielderʼ is seriously shortened and serves mostly to illustrate the cheese-opera powers of Marcolin's voice in the acappella ope­ning); predictable selections from the next three albums; and nothing whatsoever from Chapter VI onwards, because... no Messiah.
Scrutinizing the actual performances is a task / delight for radical Candlemass fans only; as far as I'm concerned, the record is completely expendable — the lead vocalist and the instrumentalists remain technically irreproachable, so that it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the versions here and on Live. If you disliked the studio production on Ancient Dreams and Tales Of Creation, you have a chance to hear a couple more of those tunes, like ʽBearer Of Painʼ, with a rawer, heavier guitar tone, and that's that. It might be more fun to catch a glimpse of some of these songs performed live — Marcolin tries to cut a dramatic figure, dressed in a Benedictine monk robe, and the entire performance is sort of structured like a multi-part exorcism ceremony; but even that, I'd say, becomes rather boring after a while. Doomed for, indeed.
CANDLEMASS (2005)
1) Black Dwarf; 2) Seven Silver Keys; 3) Assassin Of The Light; 4) Copernicus; 5) The Man Who Fell From The Sky; 6) Witches; 7) Born In A Tank; 8) Spellbreaker; 9) The Day And The Night; 10) Mars And Volcanos.
Apparently, this album almost did not happen due to old tensions quickly reignited between the original band members as they gathered in the studio; in the end, though, they managed to over­ride them for at least this one LP, before the Messiah re-ascended into the void once again, this time for good. They did make the album self-titled, though, which usually symbolizes a «reboot», in this case, a new Candlemass for a new millennium — a fairly complicated task, considering all the difficulties of getting the Nightfall lineup in the studio and not making another (inferior copy of) Nightfall in the process.
Surprisingly, the result is quite satisfactory. Of course, this is not too different from «classic» Candlemass, but in some ways, I think it actually improves upon it. If you are a purist, deeply in love with this band and treasuring its first years of output as the most inspired and innovative ones (although «innovative» is really a strange word to use in relation to these Sabbath adepts), you will not share this opinion; I, however, think that Candlemass, above and beyond everything else, are professional deliverers of «Sabbath-brand product», and that, as «product», their first albums suffered from too much pomp and too little technical care. By the mid-2000s, after twenty years of soaking and steeping, they seem to have learnt to deal with that problem: Candlemass is their first album that (a) features awesome production standards and (b) avoids sounding too ridiculous or annoying, most of the time.
Taking ʽBlack Dwarfʼ, the album's kick-ass opening song, as a good example, what do we see? The opening riff, decidedly unoriginal as usual, finally sounds thick, deep, crushing, and massive, and is propelled forward by a great drum sound — also thick, bass-heavy, without any electronic echoes or general tinny overlays that so plagued their Eighties albums. The lead guitar part is fluent, melodic, and perfectly audible over everything else (not to mention quite expressive and actually reminiscent of some cataclysmic astral processes). And, finally, Marcolin adds a layer of angry beastliness to his vocals, still relying on his operatic potential but sounding much better in the capacity of a threatening Old Testament prophet of the apocalypse than in his typical Free­shooter / Dr. Faustus image from the classic records. (And by «much better» I mean that I don't have to go "oh no, gimme a break already" every time he hits a high note).
After ʽBlack Dwarfʼ, the record predictably slows down (we know by now that Candlemass can handle fast tempos, but they have no desire to turn into Accept, after all), and the songs become more and more interchangeable. However, the corrected problems remain corrected — the pro­duction never turns to shit, and all the riffs on all the songs retain that «massive» effect, even if there is still hardly a single riff here that I would judge as immediately efficient on the classic Iommi level (more like decent/acceptable on the post-1980 Iommi level). The usual copycat prob­lems persist: the lengthy ʽCopernicusʼ features clear echoes of ʽBlack Sabbathʼ in its slower parts, while ʽBorn In A Tankʼ presents yet another variation on ʽChildren Of The Graveʼ (just how many millions of times has that song been ripped off in the world of heavy metal?). But as long as you are not forced to memorize this stuff note-by-note, I like the overall sound: seems as if Edling's direct emulation of Sabbath on that previous album left some traces behind, and now, by injecting better produced Sabbath overtones into the classic Candlemass formula, he is able to achieve somewhat more credible results.
Special mention must be made of the lyrics, which are slightly less ridiculous than they used to be (this, at least, is an area in which they seem to have made some genuine progress: I actually catch myself pondering over the message of stuff like ʽSeven Silver Keysʼ and ʽAssassin Of The Lightʼ, and even if it is the same old devil-gonna-get-me stuff, it is at least presented in a vaguely veiled manner). On the down side, the song lengths... well, that's what you get for choosing «slow» as your default tempo — something that, given the success of ʽBlack Dwarfʼ as the lead-in track, they could have easily changed, but doom metal is doom metal. Still, a modest thumbs up. If you can only coax yourself into listening to one Candlemass album, you should probably pick up something from the Eighties, but if you want something that is actually listenable (if not neces­sarily enjoyable), this reunion gig is a better choice.
KING OF THE GREY ISLANDS (2007)
1) Prologue; 2) Emperor Of The Void; 3) Devil Seed; 4) Of Stars And Smoke; 5) Demonia 6; 6) Destroyer; 7) Man Of Shadows; 8) Clearsight; 9) The Opal City; 10) Embracing The Styx.
Arguably, this album introduces the best thing that has happened to Candlemass since they learned to produce their albums outside of the figurative toilet — lead vocalist Robert Lowe, the former frontman of Solitude Aeturnus, an epic doom metal band from the heart of American Texas (yes, apparently such a thing as Texan doom metal does exist, although it's probably heavily influenced by ZZ Top, I'd imagine). This guy has got all the power of Marcolin without his operatic wailing: style-wise, he is more reminiscent of Dio, balancing the pomp and pretense with an angry snarl that brings the performance closer to earth and agrees far better with the aggressive kick of the music. In fact, sacrilegious as it seems, I actually enjoy the re-recorded versions of ʽSolitudeʼ and ʽAt The Gallows Endʼ, appended as bonus tracks to the digipak edition of the album, far more than the originals!
Add to this that Edling continues to be relatively inspired, with the songwriting level not drop­ping down from the standard of Candlemass even one bit, and you get an album that is just as enjoyable as its predecessor — more so, in fact, if you agree with me on the vocalist (but I think that even big fans of Marcolin grudgingly had to acknowledge Lowe's worthiness; not that Edling ever made any truly big mistakes hiring lead vocalists for the band). Production standards have stabilized, and there are even a few tracks that feature awesome riffs — the best of these probably being in ʽClearsightʼ, which mixes the chugging gallop style with Iommi-like «deep-heavy» bending, creating the impression of a speedy Satanic roller coaster; but stuff like ʽEmperor Of The Voidʼ, with its double-tracked metal / wah-wah guitars spiralling around at frisky tempos, or ʽMan Of Shadowsʼ, does not lag too far behind.
Non-metalheads should not get any false illusions: King Of The Grey Islands is still as stereo­typically formulaic as they come, with each song following more or less the same formula. If your attention span is strong enough to follow the nuances, somewhere in the middle of these songs you might fall upon elements of diversity — for instance, the odd acoustic interlude in the middle of ʽMan Of Shadowsʼ that comes in for only a few seconds to introduce a brief moment of tender sentimentality before the flames of Hell re-ignite once again; or the echoey, near-industrial bass solo in the middle of ʽEmbracing The Styxʼ (a title I keep hearing as "embracing the stiff", which would probably make the song acceptable for Cannibal Corpse's repertoire).
Every now and then, the record creeps up a little too close for comfort to the standards of grunge-metal and nu-metal — and Lowe's delivery may have something to do with this, since, after all, he doth come from the home country of Korn and Limp Bizkit rather than the homeland of the Vikings. But I try to brush those associations away and just keep myself convinced that this is every bit as good as Candlemass, only a little bit better because the vocalist is trying to position himself in the middle of a spooky B-movie rather than that of a Shakesperian tragedy, raising the adequacy level to acceptable heights. This is a healthy, crunchy popcorn formula that they have settled upon here, even if I would personally prefer more numbers like the infectious ʽClearsightʼ and fewer like the draggy ʽOf Stars And Smokeʼ. But they are still formally a «doom» band, aren't they? Thumbs up for making me forget about that for a moment.
LUCIFER RISING (2008)
1) Lucifer Rising; 2) White God; 3) Demons Gate; 4) At The Gallows End; 5) Solitude; 6) Emperor Of The Void; 7) Devil Seed; 8) Mirror Mirror; 9) Under The Oak; 10) Of Stars And Smoke; 11) Black Dwarf; 12) Samarithan.
This three-song EP, with two new compositions and one re-recording of a classic (ʽDemons Gateʼ), would probably not even deserve a specific mention, had it not been for the decision to expand it with nine extra tracks culled from a 2007 live performance in Athens — which essen­tially transforms a tiny EP into a lengthy live album, their third one overall and the first with Robert Lowe as the lead vocalist. In fact, it can be suspected that the only purpose of the release was to somehow legitimize Lowe's standing with the band in the eyes of all the veteran fans still continuing to deplore the second break with Marcolin.
If you have no specific bones to pick with Lowe in the first place, though, then this is just another quality live recording from the band. Lowe himself introduces a distinctly American flavor to Candlemass: instead of playing the theatrical role of God's / Satan's pawn à la Marcolin, he takes the time in between songs to adress the audience with the friendliness and nonchalance of your next door neighbor or barroom companion — with a sweet mix of politeness and familiarity; and somehow, this attitude even rubs off on the songs, which come off as more natural and earthy than operatic and pretentious. This may or may not be to one's tastes: if you believe that Candle­mass classics only work when they function in 100% «metal theater» mode, I am not going to argue with you. The doom-laden guitar power is fully preserved, anyway.
As for the new songs, I guess they're okay. ʽLucifer Risingʼ itself continues to abuse the ʽChil­dren Of The Graveʼ pattern, but at least they speed up the tempo to mask that, so the main problem with the song is that the chorus is way too repetitive — just how many times do we need to hear that Lucifer is rising before we get the urge to shut off the track in disgusted disbelief? And ʽWhite Godʼ seems to be a musical variation on the theme of ʽDemons Gateʼ, which makes it all the more strange that ʽDemons Gateʼ is the one song from their old catalog that they decided to re-record in the studio and place immediately after ʽWhite Godʼ. Maybe it's one of those «what do you like more, the old shit or the new shit?» moments — personally, I don't care all that much, because the old shit was not all that inspiring in the first place.
Anyway, bottomline is, I can only recommend this for huge supporters of Robert Lowe as the new face of Candlemass — or for those who collect everything and anything with the name of Lucifer on it. Oh, and ʽLucifer Risingʼ is actually available now as a bonus track on the digipak edition of Death Magic Doom, so there's one more argument to skip.
DEATH MAGIC DOOM (2009)
1) If I Ever Die; 2) Hammer Of Doom; 3) The Bleeding Baroness; 4) Demon Of The Deep; 5) House Of 1000 Voices; 6) Dead Angel; 7) Clouds Of Dementia; 8) My Funeral Dreams.
Death! Magic! Doom! Is there anybody out there who could resist? I mean, you have death and magic and doom, three in one — not just death, you know, which is too brutal, and not just magic, which is too infantile, and not just doom, which is kinda corny, but all three going on at the same time. And no punctuation signs, either, meaning that you can have a lot of fun with your syntactic analysis. Is it "The Doom of Death Magic"? Or "The Magic Doom of Death"? This album is nothing but a living enigma.
The song titles are awesome in their own rights. ʽIf I Ever Dieʼ, for instance, presupposes that for the protagonist, death is only one of several remote possibilities, implying the supernatural trans-essence of his being. On the other hand, ʽDead Angelʼ signifies that supernatural trans-essent beings may indeed go through the procedure of dying, analogous to mortal beings. In fact, the supernatural trans-essent protagonist does seem to be entertaining morbid thoughts of death far more often than a layman could suppose — ʽMy Funeral Dreamsʼ shows that he is not above making plans and arrangements for the potential scenario of his demise. And what about ʽThe Bleeding Baronessʼ? In describing mysterious female entities of the necrotic persuasion, our protagonist shows himself a true master of poetic alliteration — and if you were not stunned enough, this is immediately followed by ʽDemon Of The Deepʼ, just so you know that this is no boring act of coincidence. Death! Magic! Doom!
Now if only the songs themselves happened to be at least as entertaining and fun as the ones on King Of The Grey Islands, we could all go back happy and relaxed. Unfortunately, they are not. Most of this material is really slow, really tedious, really predictable, and while I still insist that Robert Lowe is the single best vocalist that Candlemass ever had, not even Lowe is able to pull the album out of the mire. ʽIf I Ever Dieʼ does start the record on a promising note, with a set of fast-paced riffs and crazy solos, but when ʽHammer Of Doomʼ comes along and it is ʽBlack Sabbathʼ time all over again (come on, just how many times can one exploit the same Devil's Chord in the exact same way?), they simply crash into a wall, and spend the rest of the album wandering aimlessly among the rubble.
As usual, it all boils down to the question of whether the record has its share of impressive riffs or not. Opinions may differ, but I vote a firm «no» on this particular occasion. They seem to have slipped back into their «classic Candlemass» skin instead of directly aping Sabbath, and so it all sounds like a better produced, but even less inspired Nightfall. Sludgy, unmemorable riffs; pon­derous verses; non-catchy choruses; and, above all, the incomprehensibility of whether we should take this shit seriously (for which it is way too cartoonish) or continue to treat it, as we always did, with a good helping of popcorn — for which it is, frankly speaking, just way too lethargic. If early Candlemass was third-rate Sabbath, then Death Magic Doom is essentially second-rate early Candlemass. And on the whole, King Of The Grey Islands had more tricks up its sleeve than this album, where almost every song sounds the same. Even ʽThe Bleeding Baronessʼ, instead of trying to sound at least a little bit spooky and lascivious, just ends up like everything else — a slow warning of impending doom, whose efficiency, now that it finds itself in the context of seven other same-sounding warnings, is now comparable to the efficiency of spam messages in your mailbox. Thumbs down.
PSALMS FOR THE DEAD (2012)
1) Prophet; 2) The Sound Of Dying Demons; 3) Dancing In The Temple (Of The Mad Queen Bee); 4) Waterwitch; 5) The Lights Of Thebe; 6) Psalms For The Dead; 7) The Killing Of The Sun; 8) Siren Song; 9) Black As Time.
Apparently, this album was intended to be the last one for Candlemass: not only did Robert Lowe quit the band six days before it was released, but Edling had explicitly stated that from then on, Candlemass would refrain from making more music (but not from playing it) — the wisest of all possible wise choices for a formulaic heavy metal outfit. That said, I got to give them their due: Psalms For The Dead came out as a much more memorable and enjoyable piece of corny art than Death Magic Doom. It does not happen on every song here, but for at least about half of them I can almost hear the cogs grinding as they try to grope for everything that made their music snappy, and stay away from boring sludge.
The big difference is in the tone: much of the time, they tune their instruments precisely the same way that Iommi did on Master Of Reality, and this provides the riffs with extra earthy buzz, making them writhe and wriggle like hellish serpents. This is not seen on ʽProphetʼ, the some­what misguided opener that is more stoner rock than doom metal; but already ʽThe Sound Of Dying Demonsʼ has that dark psychedelic tonal attack, inherited from ʽIron Manʼ and ʽInto The Voidʼ and supported by otherworldly sound effects. To be honest, I am not at all sure if it is within the capacity of a demon to actually die, but if it is, they make a cool sound when they die: the keyboard accompaniment to Lowe's chanting of the song title sounds like some spooky theme from a Vincent Price movie, and this is exactly what we've been missing last time around — a little bit of Satanic theatricality to return the band to being fun.
Altogether, the record has a lot more occult and magical atmosphere — among its various characters we have The Mad Queen Bee (surrounded by trolls, fays, and even Cyclops!), Rusal­kas (ʽWaterwitchʼ), Sirens, and did I mention the dying demons? They aren't all that different from each other in spirit — ultimately, they all want to feed on your flesh or your soul or both, and the music perfectly reflects that attitude, once again looking back to their early 1970s inspi­rations for support. Sometimes they go way too overboard with this: ʽSiren Songʼ, for what it is worth, is really a musical re-write of Uriah Heep's ʽGypsyʼ, based on the same three-chord riff and even combining it with the same «prog guy going unreasonably insane on the organ» trick, as the band's honored guest, Per Wiberg of Opeth, delivers a lengthy organ solo after you have learned that "the sirens will suck on your soul" (the sirens like to do this to the swirling sounds of the Hammond, you see).
But on ʽWaterwitchʼ, bringing back to life the wah-wah tones of ʽElectric Funeralʼ, they hit it just about right — the riff is adequately fleshed out, and Johansson's soloing is hystrionic without being too complex and flashy; and ʽThe Killing Of The Sunʼ gives us a nice variation on the ʽIron Manʼ riff, while Lowe chants a simple singalong melody as if this were 1970 all over again, and Tony and Ozzy were back here with us, mulling over more crazy ideas of how to combine nursery rhyme-level catchiness with extreme musical brutality. And then there's ʽThe Lights Of Thebeʼ, where the central part, of course, is Robert Lowe screeching "there's evil... evil... EVIL IN MY MIND!" like a diplomated Sith Lord. And then they top it off with ʽBlack As Timeʼ, introduced by a Vincent Price-style narration about how "time frankly doesn't give a shit, and above all... time is BLACK!", and it's... awesome.
I mean, Candlemass are a cheesy band by definition, yes, but Psalms For The Dead, I think, is the first time when they deliberately attempted to spoof their own image a bit, willingly turning into Spinal Tap and just concocting a spooky set of fairy tales for us — and they do this with interesting riffs, cool guitar tones, and catchy refrains, so I have no problem dealing out one last thumbs up here. Again, hardcore old school fans might not see it that way at all, but as far as I see it, the less seriously you are supposed to take a band like this, the more effective it becomes, and I am glad that their last album came out that way — provided it is really their last album, and old boy Messiah Marcolin is not still lurking somewhere out there in the gallery, waiting for a chance to once more saddle this band with his way-too-sincere Mad Monk impersonations.
CARCASS



REEK OF PUTREFACTION (1988)
1) Genital Grinder; 2) Regurgitation Of Giblets; 3) Maggot Colony; 4) Pyosisified (Rotten To The Gore); 5) Carbo­nized Eyesockets; 6) Frenzied Detruncation; 7) Vomited Anal Tract; 8) Festerday; 9) Fermenting Innards; 10) Excre­ted Alive; 11) Suppuration; 12) Foeticide; 13) Microwaved Uterogestation; 14) Feast On Dismembered Carnage; 15) Splattered Cavities; 16) Psychopathologist; 17) Burnt To A Crisp; 18) Pungent Excruciation; 19) Manifestation Of Verrucose Urethra; 20) Oxidized Razor Masticator; 21) Mucopurulence Excretor; 22) Malignant Defecation.
If you ever had any problems with the Liverpudlian accents of the Fab Four, try this for comfort: anybody capable of deciphering even a single word on Carcass' debut album without peeking into the lyrics sheet should probably be burned at the stake for serious witchcraft. Likewise, if you can commit even a single «melody» on this album to an individual memory cell, you should probably take immediate action to get yourself committed before the shit hits the fan.
Meet bass player Jeffrey Walker, guitarist Bill Steer, and drummer Ken Owen, three friendly and (according to most sources) perfectly normal guys that, one day, set out on the quest of making the most disgusting rock album ever. The immediate influence here is the pioneering grindcore of Napalm Death, for whom Steer also played guitar (and Walker designed the art of their first album, Scum, just to indicate the sort of symbiotic relationship between the two) — but while Napalm Death concentrated more on the laconic-minimalistic side of things, Carcass took it into an, ahem, somewhat more anatomical direction. As you can see, you do not need to go further than the song titles — and a thorough study of the lyrics with a medical encyclopaedia by your side, accompanied by some unflinching staring at this and the ensuing album covers, will make you perfectly qualified for a job as morgue assistant without any real need for a college degree.
The only thing in favor of this record is total commitment — but its totality is, in fact, so over­whelming that it translates to a certain kind of hip charm even in the minds of perfectly sane people (in fact, perfectly sane people are its base audience — it's not as if Carcass had a small, but loyal fanbase of mass murderers and necrophiliacs in mind). The band is unquestionably very tight and professional, but here it completely sacrifices skill to the idea of heaviness, speed, and «melodic blurriness», making Slayer sound like ABBA in comparison; and the vocals are an incomprehensible slurred growl all the way. For 37 minutes in a row, the record operates in two modes — fast and very fast, where all fast parts sound the same, all very fast parts sound the same, and the only difference between fast and very fast is... uh... tempo.
One does have to somehow «accept» the whole package — music, voice, song titles, song lyrics, album art, etc. — for the experience to work. Of course, it's essentially an «anti-musical» joke, whose only serious point is testing the limits of personal and artistic freedom, something that John Peel must have understood very well when he called Carcass his favorite new band of 1988 and got them to appear on his show. Later on, the songs would become longer, more melodic and «musical», not to mention the production, which is pretty bad here, and, apparently, the band members themselves were unhappy with it, but with this kind of approach, lo-fi, dirty, and mean actually works best: I mean, when you name a song ʽVomited Anal Tractʼ, it better sound like a vomited anal tract, or else what's the frickin' point?
It would hardly make sense to condemn the album with the «anybody could produce this kind of shit» argument, either. First, it takes some serious practice to become a top level grindcore artist. Second, it takes real guts (or, perhaps, in the spirit of the album, it takes some really fermented innards) to come up with such an uncompromising concept. Third, once you get around to reading the lyrics, they are really hilarious — probably some of the most verbose, poetic, inven­tive texts centered around complex human anatomy ever thought of by living man (not that I'm mentally prepared to analyze any of them here). Fourth, the sheer contrast between the persona­lities of the band members (who are nice-behaving vegetarians) and the «atrociousness» of the whole concept is somehow quite comforting — I'd certainly rather have that than comparable work of an actual madman like G. G. Allin.
But clearly, there's no need to actually discuss the music; unlike later Carcass albums, the basic point of these songs is that even if they start out with actual chord sequences, the insane tempos mash them together in a grinder and the muddy production finishes the job. The idea is not to «hum» these songs, but to participate in a deranged, macabre dance of death — a fun thing to do, provided you do not accidentally blast these songs out of your car when passing near a hospice (and even if you do, you'd still have to drop leaflets with printed lyrics in the yard to achieve the necessary sacrilegious effect) or send out a complementary version of the CD to victims of nuc­lear meltdown accidents. I am not, by any means, giving this album a proper «thumbs up», but I certainly acknowledge not just its right to existence, but its actual artistic purpose. Besides, you could probably get an M.D., easy, with just a cursory analysis of the lyrics — or, at the very least, vastly expand your anatomical vocabulary.