CANDLEMASS - "Nightfall"

Artist:  Candlemass
Song:  Mourner’s Lament
Album:  Nightfall
Year:  1987
Genre:  Doom Metal 

I had about 5 different ways I wanted to start talking about Candlemass, but I’m going to run with this; Candlemass are the greatest doom metal band to ever grace this planet.  Their influence and body of work stands for itself.  Over the span of 11 full-length records, multiple EPs, singles and live recording, they have yet to put out a “bad” album.  The apex of their work, and the album I’m going to be referring to, is 1987’s as-close-to-perfect-as-you-can-get Nightfall.  Originator and only constant band member, Leif Edling, has kept the funeral pyre of Candlemass blazing since 1984 and truly altered the way the world heard doom metal.  He stripped away and buried any of the blues influence that was being hammered out by icons Black Sabbath (along with Sabbath clones Pentagram, Witchfinder General, St. Vitus and Trouble) and replaced it with depressive, powerful dirges full of hopelessness and despair.  That’s just a reference to the instrumentation.  Singer Messiah Marcolin’s baratone range and operatic style blended perfectly with the dispiriting tone of the music.  Messiah tells stories of sadness, death and loss that create visual impressions for the listener.  In “At The Gallows End” you get the sense of the loneliness and regret one might feel before dying.  In “Mourner’s Lament” you get a sense of  the bleak sadness one might feel from the loss of a child.  The ability to stir a person’s emotions in a situation one’s never experienced is powerful.  Prattling on and on about the exceptional work Candlemass conjured on this particular record is a conversation too long to type. Nightfall is an experience, not just an album.  No weaknesses.  No filler.  It's one of those records that I know every part, time change and lyric, as I've listened to it just as frequently as I have other classics such as “Walk Among Us,” “Master Of Puppets,” "Pretty Hate Machine," “Metal Church,” “The Crew” and “Reign In Blood.”  Pretty good company.

Listen to "Mourner's Lament" here.