Base One was a Swedish Music fanzine that started out in 1989 and was around for a couple of years. They wrote about all kinds of music, so not just metal. It was written in Swedish, so here’s a translation of a Candlemass article from #4, 1990.
[BASE ONE] Candlemass: Fairy Tales as Reality
Rock on the last day? Then it should be pompous and grandiose drama to emphasize that the end is near.
Swedish CANDLEMASS is the band that makes the minor chords sound more minor than everyone else and with their doom metal they are destined to play 'top-of-the-bill' that day. If nothing else, they became for many the best band at last year's Hultsfredsfestival with their smoke-blasted cannonades.
Pathetic or not, the band wants it that way. And apparently so does the audience.
A few thousand records are sold here at home, but abroad the figure is closer to a hundred thousand…
THE DARK SIDES of human nature never cease to fascinate. Chaos, fear, evil and pain occupy enormous spaces in newspapers, on TV, in books, on theater stages and in music. The only thing that can compete for people's interest is sex, and that is also part of the dark according to some.
In short, the wholehearted sinner is a good deal. If it were not so, it is doubtful whether religions such as Christianity, Catholicism and Islam could have arisen at all. Everyone wants to be good, and if someone presents a sufficiently credible picture of how this is to be achieved, there is always someone who listens and falls for it.
In hard rock, the struggle between good and evil has been a main theme ever since the Birmingham boys Black Sabbath struck their first chord. Within the various churches there are songs that go a good deal further back in time, which in turn can be noticed in the old blues masters. The only difference is that when the whole thing is portrayed in heavy hard rock, it is immediately devil worship. Then Satan lurks around every corner to snatch another helpless soul. If the biblical god had not banished the angel Lucifer to the underworld, everything would have been peaceful and happy, but even Christians must have something to blame for their failures. According to Allan Rubin, EAP's subdivision Anti-drug Coalition, Salvation Army and Pentecostal Church, it is entirely possible that everything from Hitler's vision of the thousand-year kingdom to modern-day drug abuse can be blamed on hard rock, because it addresses the same aspects of existence as the Bible. Logically…
Heaven and Hell
In Sweden we don't have many groups that deal with that type of hard rock, so far the Anti-drug Coalition has only jumped on In The Colonnades, and they aren't even real hard rockers. If Candlemass continues to grow at the same rate as it has so far, there is a risk that they too will soon have to fight with the freethinkers and moralists outside their gigs. Candlemass are big on the fight between good and evil. In addition, they play some of the heaviest hard rock that can be found in the country. Their minor chords are more minor than some others, the difference between heaven and hell has never been greater and really, we are always lost souls anyway, so what does it matter that we exist?
In a country where hard rock is spelled Europe, Treat, Electric Boys and maybe Glorious Bankrobbers, Candlemass are extreme. In fact, so extreme that hardly any Swedes outside the innermost hard rock circles know them, even though they are probably competing with Treat in terms of size, purely in terms of sales.
Candlemass plays something that has come to be called doom metal, and despite the Swedes being a highly suicidal people, there are no more than, optimistically calculated, about three thousand lost souls who think that visions of life in the valley of the shadow of death are fresh news. That's nothing that bothers Leif Edling, Candlemass' bassist, songwriter and driving force. What bothers him, however, is the term doom metal.
— It's a modern term that really just means that the music is heavy, slow and in a minor key. But all our material doesn't sound like that. We play more traditional heavy metal, in the classic sense, says Leif.
Well, if you name your first album 'Epicus Doomicus Metallicus' you have yourself to blame a little bit. That album appeared in March 1986 and immediately put Candlemass on the map for hard rockers worldwide. However, that wasn't the real start for Leif. Before Candlemass, he had the band Nemesis, which was even heavier, but which according to Leif maybe wasn't completely impeccable. They did get one album anyway, 'The Day Of Retribution'.
First in Europe
According to many, Candlemass was one of the first bands of its style, not only in Sweden but in the whole world, something that Leif doesn't completely agree with.
— There were some bands that were doing pretty much the same things as us, but it was us and Trouble who released records first, he says. In Europe we were probably the first really heavy metal band.
‘Epicus Doomicus Metallicus’ is today a rarity among fans, partly because it was pressed in a small number of copies but also because it differs slightly in style from Candlemass’ later records in its heaviness and rawness. On ‘Epicus…’ Johan Langquist is in charge of the vocals, which he only did on that record. Then came Messiah Marcolin, formerly in Mercy, into the soundscape.
Since the start in 1985, a couple of guitarists and a drummer have also come and gone. But from the second LP, 'Nightfall', the group has included Janne Lindh on drums, Lars Johansson on lead guitar, backing guitarist Mats Björkman and then Leif on bass and Messiah on vocals. There have been two more albums, 'Ancient Dreams' and 'Tales Of Creation'. The latter came out last fall and is predicted to be the band's biggest success to date.
Own sound
Throughout their existence, Candlemass have been accused of being Black Sabbath plagiarists, which is completely untrue, something you can easily hear if you dare to play a couple of albums with the bands in parallel.
— The band that has had the most influence on Candlemass is Angelwitch, I think, and to some extent also Rainbow. Of course Sabbath is in the background, they've all listened to them, but we've never tried to sound like them.
No, Candlemass' sound is actually their own. It doesn't take that many bars for you to recognize them, and as soon as Marcolin lifts his powerful voice there is no doubt at all. It is pompous, but at the same time very melodious, almost sacred in places. On 'Tales Of Creation' they are more varied than ever, there Leif has consciously wanted to show that Candlemass are capable of doing something other than doomsday rock. "Into the unfathomed tower" for example is a lightning fast instrumental song where Lars Johansson really gets to show what he is made of.
However, the theme has been the same throughout. With a lofty seriousness, sometimes almost on the wrong side of the pretentious border, Leif and Candlemass deal with the really big topics such as life, death and creation. Messiah's dramatic voice does its part and gives the whole thing a chanting, almost preaching tone.
Daytime nightmare
— It should be grandiose, it is meant to be. I have a rather gloomy approach to my own taste and then it will be what it will be. I used to read quite a lot of thrillers and detective stories and such, but I got tired of that, so now it's almost all fantasy that applies. There's a lot of sword & sorcery and dungeons & dragons. But my lyrics should be seen more as fairy tales than reality. It should be something to dream away to, Leif explains.
It's certainly the case that not everyone would think that Candlemass is the best option for daydreaming, unless it's daytime nightmares you're looking for. With their fate-filled approach, none of their records are to be recommended as nighttime music for the unstable. But they fill their niche and that's good enough, which Leif also thinks.
— We have a special style and a special sound that we don't intend to change, because then it wouldn't be Candlemass. When I write the songs, I always try to vary them as much as possible within the framework we've set for ourselves. We try to avoid clichés and I would like every song to have something a little extra.
When Candlemass started, hard rock wasn't that violently hip, but since thrash and speed metal came along, this has slowly but surely changed. Of course, that's something that has also helped Candlemass, even though Leif prefers to see their success as the fruits of their own labor. Things have been moving forward, albeit slowly. Maybe the pace will pick up now that they have the English record label Music For Nations behind them and for the first time proper support in terms of promotion, distribution and managing. They already know that the next LP will be a long time coming, because soon it will be time to go on a really long tour to sell out their latest LP.
And when they're done with that, maybe the most famous hard rock band from Upplands Väsby will no longer be Europe or Yngwie Malmsteen, but Candlemass.