Candlemass – Black Star

vote
5.5

• Band:
  Candlemass
• Duration: 00:18:42
• Available since: 09/05/2025
• Label:

• Napalm Records

Streaming not yet available

For the undersigned, the enthusiasm aroused by this last incarnation of Candlemass remains quite a mystery, which revealed a little surprise in 2018 and in the meantime became something suspiciously solid. The publications arrived so far, or the albums “The Door to Doom” and “Sweet Evil Sun”, are discreet style exercises in Classic Doom sauce, only partially endowed with the bite, fantasy and class of other incarnations of the legendary Swedish Doomsters.
Although Johan Längquist, despite the very long absence from the scenes, has still shown himself up to height vocally and as an attitude from Frontman, to our ears the sounds expressed in the above albums seemed irreparably old, a little looted, without the brilliance that are having, for example, the pentagram today. Colleagues with even longer history and lesser changes of course, if we want, yet capable in recent times of giving still rather fresh and adrenaline music.
Having said that, the “Black Star” EP, published on the occasion of the forty -year of training, calls the work of the last few years, which, moreover, presenting material rather tightened in the duration and stingy of who knows what goods.
Inside there are in fact two unpublished – the initial “Black Star” and “Corridor of Chaos” – and two covers, “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” of the Black Sabbath and “Forever My Queen”, precisely of the aforementioned Pentagram. The title-track is a very phone midtempo, a dressed and thinly evil as well as the Candlemass have written several in their career, only normally with a look and a liveliness that today seem to have gone. If some slowdowns and the always inspired solism of Lars Johansson give some jolts, the bulk of the song immediately addresses on reassuring and monocorted tracks, and does not come out until the conclusion. The obsessive vocal lines of Längquist do nothing but hear the feeling of little verve and very profession induced by the title-track.
Things are better in “Corridor of Chaos”, a painful and balanced instrumental between force and melancholy, for two third very melodic and enveloping, therefore hard and blackened in the shades towards the ending. In short, a well done job, even if the track would have highlighted better within a real album.
The cover of “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” honestly leaves us very perplexed: musically it retraces, with more power and without Orpelli, the structure of the original, playing a little dry, school and woody. Vocally, the performance of Längquist is not bad at all in the quietest moments, while in the more metallic ones it appears to us over the lines, all too charged and angry. It could be done better.
More “Forever My Queen” focus, between Rock'n'roll spirits and Heavy Metal of the origins. The song best adapts, musically and vocally, to today's candlemass and here, all in all, the Swedes do their duty to the end.
Overall, therefore it seems to us that the contents of “black star” are rather skimpy, giving the idea of ​​a fairly empty operation of meaning and implementing only to fill the record void and keep the band's name warm. We will see what Leif Edling and companions will be able to do in the near future …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbwibzzojne