Devil Music A-Z: Candlemass

Don't let the above pic scare you away. Candlemass is not as ridiculous as that appears. Actually that picture is during their most popular era in the 90's with Messiah Marcolin as their singer. Candlemass has gone through quite a few of them during their long history.I'm actually going to go against the grain and state here that Messiah is not my favorite singer of the bunch. More on this after the jump.

I'm not a big expert on this band having only deciding to check them out a year or so ago. One big reason I had never really heard about them until recently was that they're from Sweden and formed at a time when the only Swedish imports really doing anything in the late 80's in the States was Europe and later on Ace of Base. When I did become aware of them years later it was because of this video.



Pretty bad ass track right? I'm thinking,where are people getting this founder of doom stuff from? This is pretty uptempo. Well as I started listening to albums it turned out this is the fastest song they made during in their whole career.You see Mats Bjorkman is a huge Black Sabath fan and fashions his riffs around old Ozzy and Dio era Sabbath albums. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But Messiah brought a style of vocals that was kind of unique and over the top. I think if they had continued to play this style of music they would have broken through but alas it was not to be.

My favorite singers are Johan Langvist from the first album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. He has a similar vocal style as Messiah but not quite as over the top. It's a shame he didn't want to tour and continue on with the band. And the current singer Robert Lowe on the last two albums is a perfect fit for the band 25 years after their formation.

This group has had so many ups and downs over the years its actually amazing they're still around and kicking. And I'm glad because their brand of doom which is actually more about dark fantasy then doom is a hell of alot more interesting then the groups that were inspired by them later on.Here are some tracks from the eras that I like.