CANDLEMASS: EPICUS DOOMICUS METALLICUS (1986)
1) Solitude; 2) Demon's Gate;
3) Crystal Ball; 4) Black Stone Wielder; 5) Under The Oak; 6) A Sorcerer's
Pledge.
I confess that I have never read any interviews
with Leif Edling or any other members of Candlemass, let alone any official or
unofficial biography of the band — and therefore, I have no idea of how deeply
serious they are themselves about their music. But whatever they have to say
about it, it would be very hard for
me to accept that anybody who names their first album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus could do it without a tongue-in-cheek
attitude. Really, this is within the same sphere as «Biggus Dickus» or
something like that. And it makes me happy, too, because a solid healthy tongue-in-cheek
attitude is the only thing that can save Candlemass from a massive facepalm,
all of their historical importance notwithstanding.
Apparently, the entire genre of «doom metal»
owes its formalization to the title of Candlemass' debut — and when it
appeared, it did sound significantly different from earlier purveyors of the
style, such as Saint Vitus and Pentagram. They were one of the first
Scandinavian (in this case, Swedish) bands to open up the floodgates for
Valhalla-Ragnarök-inspired heavy music, and, like every pioneering outfit,
might sound a little crude, unpolished, and naïve in comparison with their
followers — much like Black Sabbath, their chief source of inspiration, might
also seem in comparison with the general heavy metal scene that followed. But
they have their advantages, too, a chief one being driven by the excitement
that accompanies trying out a new formula.
A formula it is, of course, as bassist Leif
Edling (who writes most of the music) and his pals capitalize on but one aspect
of Sabbath — the slow, solemn, earth-shattering brutality of impending doom —
and expand it to forty-three minutes of dungeon-crawling music for your
paganistic pleasure. Since the songs are slow, they are also long (just six
tracks in all), and mood-wise, their goal is always exactly the same, making it
understandably hard to come up with separate judgements for individual tracks.
Differences include the presence/absence of acoustic intros and interludes;
the presence/absence of slightly sped up parts; increased/understated presence
of lead guitar; increased/diminished function of the synthesizer (yes, a few
tracks are marred by Queensrychian keyboards, but, thankfully, not all of
them, and I do believe that the credits do not even include a special listing
for keyboards).
Typically, the weakest link in Candlemass is
the vocalist: in their minds, the style calls for a pompous screamer rather
than a vulnerable-street-guy like Ozzy, but they couldn't lay their hands on
anybody of at least Ronnie James Dio caliber, either, so they had to settle for
a Tony Martin look-alike instead and go along with Johan Längqvist, a large-piped
loudmouth who is trying to deliver the apocalyptic / medievalistic lyrics with
as much pathos as his pipes allow him, but also happens to be endowed with
below-zero charisma and personality. Unfortunately, there's a lot of the lyrics on the album: were
they to simply confine him to singing one opening and one closing verse and
then devote the rest of the time to instrumental magic-making, things would get
more tolerable and interesting — as it is, he happens to be all over the place,
and it's bad.
What is good, then? The riffs. Edling's melodic
skills are not directly comparable to Iommi in his prime — there is not a
single passage here that would come close to the immediate visionary brilliance
of an ʽElectric Funeralʼ or an ʽInto The Voidʼ — but he is still close to a
perfect adept of the Iommi textbook, and rhythm guitarist Mats Björkman is able
to reproduce that metal-melting, Hell-raising tone that, for some reason, had
all but vanished off the Earth's surface after Sabbath's peak years. Meanwhile,
lead guitarist Klas Bergwall, although kept amazingly quiet most of the time,
occasionally erupts with new-generation metal solos that try to combine old
school fluency and melodicity with a more technical, post-Van Halen attitude.
The result is an interesting update on the Sabbath sound that is nowhere near
as memorable as the original, but does not sound like mere slavish imitation,
either.
If only one song needed to be singled out of
the overall sludgy mass, I'd probably go for ʽUnder The Oakʼ, which is
melodically as close to (slow) thrash metal as they ever get here and, because
of that, gets an extra aggressive angle — most of these tunes just growl and
grumble under your feet, but the opening riff of ʽUnder The Oakʼ actually snaps
at your feet. If it weren't for the necessity to somehow erase the vocal
track from the corresponding channel in your brain ("MY HEART! BLEEDING
FOR MY RACE!" — don't worry, they actually mean ʽmankindʼ under ʽraceʼ
here, there are no traces of Aryan supremacy or anything like that, but it
still sounds very, very ridiculous), this would be close to the perfect
Candlemass song... unfortunately, since most of the vocals on Candlemass songs
are dorky, there is no such thing as a perfect Candlemass song. As for the
Iommi-style riffs, the best ones are probably on ʽSolitudeʼ (which is not a cover of the Sabbath tune, but the
fact that they have a song by that name is probably not a coincidence) and
ʽDemon's Gateʼ, but really, most of these slow sludgy monsters are
interchangeable.
For all its alleged importance, still, Epicus is hardly the best possible
Candlemass album. For one thing, even if the formula is established here 100%,
it suffers from mediocre production values: the drums sound too tinny, and the
guitars sound oddly distant, as if they had microphone problems — worse, in
fact, than those fifteen-year old Sabbath albums on which they were modeling
themselves. Strangely, it may have something to do with the shittiness of
Stockholm's studios at the time: Bathory's debut, recorded two years prior to
this, suffered from the same problem. Eventually, they'd get it straight, but
for now, Epicus Domicus is more like
Crapicus Sonicus in certain
respects. Oh, and I can't really remember a single song, either, but for that one, I was fully prepared. Just as
I was for brilliant lines like "The dawn was to come with the
sunrise" and "Cursed be the sun / The women will weep for his fun /
In the name of his magic so strong". What I was not prepared for was how oddly «homebrewn», in a way, this whole
thing sounds: a problem that would not be overcome for quite some time yet.
Still, I guess that the combination of an overall cool sound and historical
importance should account for a mild thumbs up, despite production issues, lyrics that
make Geezer Butler sound like Keats in comparison, and a vocalist whom I would very
gladly "let die in solitude" if he'd only let me. Why shouldn't he?
Death is his sanctuary, he seeks it with pleasure, his lifeblood is exhausted
anyway...
sounds more like Mercyful Fate covering Sabbath to me. A classic and indeed their best. You have to buy into the theatrical aspects of it (like Mercyful Fate, again) but the album really works as a whole.
ReplyDeleteDespite a dedicated effort, I generally side with doom of the American tradition than a European one.
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