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Swedish band Candlemass’ 1986 debut album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus is a bona doom metal landmark, giving the template laid down by Black Sabbath in the early 70s and developed in the US by The Obsessed and Saint Viitus an epic Scandinavian feel. In 2007, bassist and chief songwriter Leif Edling looked back on the making of one of the most influential albums of the 1980s.

It’s arguably the greatest album title of all time – but Epicus Doomicus Metallicus is far more than a clever twist of language. This is the record that began a doom dynasty, generating a desire and enthusiasm for the music in Europe generally and, more significantly, Sweden that prospers to this day.

“It’s great to know that the album is respected,” says bassist Leif Edling. “Especially as it sold really badly when first released, and we got some terrible reviews.”

From Stockholm, Candlemass were created by Edling, drummer Matz Ekström and Mats ‘Mappe’ Björkman; Edling had previously been with Nemesis, releasing cult album Day Of Retribution in 1984. That same year the Candle flickered into life with their Witchcraft demo, swiftly followed by a second demo titled Studio Garage [“We recorded it in a studio that was literally called The Garage!”]. While these demos spread the word through the underground, it was a third one – Bewitched – that led to a deal with small French label Black Dragon.

“We did this purely to get a record deal. I sent the demo to about ten labels,” recalls Edling. “I know that I gave one to Brian Ross, who was the singer in an English band called Satan. He was planning to start his own record company, but nothing came of it.

“We were keen on Black Dragon, because we loved some of the other bands they’d signed, like Manilla Road and Chastain. So, when they offered us a deal, we were delighted.”

At the time, the band were just the trio of Edling, Ekström and Björkman. With the bassist also handling the vocals.

“Black Dragon wanted me to carry on singing. They liked what I’d done on the demo. But I wasn’t at all comfortable, and my aim was to get in someone permanent. Matz Ekström knew a guy called Johan Längquist, who’d been in various bands around the Stockholm area, such as Jonah Quizz, and he agreed to do the album. I was convinced that once we got hold of Johan then he’d agree to join full-time – but I was wrong. As soon as we’d finished in the studio, he was off again!”

The same problem surrounded the search for a lead guitarist. Christian Weberyd had been brought in for the Bewitched demo, but was soon on his way. Enter Klas Bergwall. “I knew him quite well, and again was aiming to use the album to persuade Klas his future was with us. The problem was that our area of Stockholm was full of great guitarists – you couldn’t move for them. But they were all into AC/DC or UFO. They hated the sort of heavy music we were doing. So, we were in the terrible position of being surrounded by some amazing guitarists, but none of them wanted to know us. Klas ended up like Johan – he did the record and then disappeared.”

With a makeshift line-up, plus a cheque for $3000 from their record company, Candlemass headed for Thunderload Studios in January 1986, and a five-days of inhospitable conditions. The studio was run by the Wahlquist brothers, Styrbjörn and Ragne, members of cult 1980s Swedish metal band Heavy Load. The latter was to produce.

“We wanted to work there, because we’d heard a demo that Yngwie Malmsteen had done at the studio, and it sounded amazing. But little did we know the conditions we were gonna face. It was absolutely freezing in there.” The studio was three floors beneath the ground, in the middle of a subway at the University of Stockholm, and if ever a band suffered for their doom craft, then it was this lot!

“You’ve no idea how cold it was – totally freezing. The radiators didn’t work, which made it even worse. You had to see what we looked like. We were all dressed in fur coats, woollen gloves and long johns. Trying to play guitar with cold hands is almost impossible. I know we’re a doom band, but this was suffering way beyond the call of duty.”

Längquist in particular was hit hard by the extreme conditions.

“He would be doing his vocals, dressed as warmly as possible with loads of layers of clothes, while jumping up and down to keep the cold out,” says Edling. “And you could see the steam rising from him. It was weird.

“Plus, we were stone cold sober all the time – with the emphasis on ‘cold’,” the bassist continues with a laugh. “We knew we had so little time in the studio that there was none to waste. We had to get on with the job, and partying wasn’t on the agenda. Actually, focusing on the recording process wasn’t all that difficult. All of us were used to being in the studio, so we could concentrate. But vodka might have made a difference.”

The band walked out of Thunderload convinced they’d recorded something approaching a masterpiece. “We loved what we’d done. It was so exciting. The record had turned out better than we dared hope, and there was a real air of expectation from us. So, we were crushed when it sold disastrously.”

Released in June, 1986, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus was an immediate…flop. Nobody seemed to be bothered by the fact that it was changing the face of doom.

“We were hammered everywhere. Sure some of the very small fanzines loved what we were doing. But the bigger magazines just slammed us. They didn’t get what was being done at all. However, in the long term, all of that worked in our favour.”

Before analysing exactly how Candlemass turned defeat into triumph, let’s briefly look at the album itself. This was a modern metal album, raw, primitive and full of doom potential. The band weren’t mimicking Black Sabbath, Trouble or St Vitus – they were forging ahead on their own groove. Edling had hoped to open the album with the formidable Demon’s Gate, but was overruled.

“The others thought it was too long and too heavy. Considering that we came up with the equally heavy Solitude as the eventual first track, that’s just bizarre! We wrote Solitude just before we went into the studio. Of the others, only A Sorcerer’s Pledge and Under The Oak had been on demos. The rest were brand new tracks – like any band, we wanted to put our most recent songs on the album, and not re-hash old material.”

Meanwhile, six months after the album had first limped into view and seemingly out of sight, it got its second wind.

“In the end, the failure of the album to sell immediately was such a boost. You see, firstly Black Dragon dropped the band, which allowed us to sign a new deal with Active Records. Then, the metal underground began to discover the album without any media prompting or hype. So, things started to mushroom and explode all on their own.”

By the end of 1986, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus had began to sell in impressive quantities. So much so that, Black Dragon were forced into a second pressing of the record. Then a third, then a fourth…

“It does amuse me, because just before we were dropped, I got a letter from the label telling us that they didn’t owe us any royalties, as the album had barely sold. But they enclosed two IRCs [International Reply Coupons] out of the goodness of their hearts, so we might keep in contact with them. That was worth about 50p! But, when the album really started to shift they were desperate to get us back – too late, we’d moved on!”

These days, the album’s pedigree is unassailable, Edling vindicated by its stature.

“You look at any polls in magazines, and that is always top of the doom list. I think we did help to shape the sound of the genre as we all know it today. In fact, I’m always amazed that so many black metal bands from Norway cite the record as a huge influence. Satyricon, Immortal, Emperor – they all love it, but we also did a lot for Swedish metal in general.

“Before we got our deal, the heavy bands in our country really had no hope. The problem was that, unless you were a band like Europe, Swedish labels didn’t want to know. We proved it was possible to go outside of Sweden and get signed, and it opened the floodgates. Bands like Entombed and Dismember followed suit – and the scene took off.”

All of which leaves one subject to tackle – the title of the album. From what wellspring of genius did that come from? Was it a moment of inspiration? Erm no. Edling reckons it was a flash of sheer – nonsense.

“We’d always called our music ‘epic doom metal’, right? That’s the way we believed our sound should be represented. And then Matz Ekström gave it that Latin feel with Epicus Doomicus Metallicus But when he put that forward as a possible album title, I was horrified. It was just utter shite . Come on, have you ever heard anything worse? The trouble was that there was no obvious alternative. I’m sure we did come up with others, but they must have been so dreadful that I’ve blocked them from my mind!”

So, Ekström’s moment arrived. And there are those convinced that the sole reason the album began to infiltrate the underground was that the title itself attracted an audience. It made people sit up, listen to the record – and the rest is doom mythology.

“I don’t know about that,” admits Edling. “Perhaps in choosing something so preposterous, we actually laid the foundations for our own success. But it didn’t seem so at the time.”

Whatever the truth, the fact remains that Epicus Doomicus Metallicus did open up new horizons for doom, re-imagined the genre and made it cool.

So, is this the greatest doom album ever?

”It’s not for me to say, but I won’t argue with anyone who says that!”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 172, October 2007

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term “thrash metal” while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021. 

Sex Pistols, featuring Frank Carter on vocals, will undertake their first North American tour in over two decades this Fall.

“At the end of the day, we’re living in a really, really difficult time. So not only do people want to come and just be entertained, they want to enjoy themselves. Punk is an energetic music. It’s one where you can go and vent and let your hair down, hopefully in a safe manner. Fingers crossed, no bottles or pigs’ hooves.”

Sex Pistols & Frank Carter North American tour

Sep 16: Dallas Longhorn Ballroom, TX
Sep 23: Washington, DC, 9:30 Club
Sep 26: Philadelphia Fillmore, PA
Sep 27: Brooklyn TBD, NY
Sep 30: Montreal Mtelus, Canda

Oct 01: Toronto History, Canada
Oct 03: Cleveland Agora Theatre, OH
Oct 04: Detroit Fillmore, MI
Oct 07: Minneapolis Fillmore, MN
Oct 10: Denver Mission Ballroom, CA
Oct 13: Seattle Showbox SoDo, WA
Oct 15: San Francisco Warfield, CA
Oct 16: Los Angeles Hollywood Palladium, CA

Lydon, however, has clearly not seen the band in person. The band’s March 24 show in London received nothing but rave reviews, including a 5 star Louder review.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

The debut collection from includes: Die-Liner – “a rich, high-pigment black eyeliner designed to make a statement” – Liquid Lipstick, the Welcome To Horrorwood eyeshadow palette (“fifteen versatile shades to create looks from wearable natural, smoky to vibrant eye-catching styles”) and Devil’s ‘Do Grim Grip pomade, to “keep you looking sharp through even the most violent of nights.”

For more information about the range, go here.

Ice Nine Kills support Metallica in Toronto on April 26, before playing headline shows across North America, plus further select shows with Metallica, and US festivals including Sonic Temple and Warped Tour.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

In the middle of legal disputes over their name, Pink Floyd created a personal and emotionally exposed album. The Division Bell defiantly went against the Britpop zeitgeist to top the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Prog explored its history in 2014.

“Why is that bloke singing like Syd?” asked Rick Wright. It was May 1994, and Pink Floyd’s keyboard player had just heard Blur’s new album Parklife. Floyd were on tour in America and had gathered in guitarist David Gilmour’s hotel suite to listen to the album that had just supplanted their latest, The Division Bell, at the No.1 spot.

Wright might have been concerned that Damon Albarn sounded like his ex-bandmate Syd Barrett, but his was the only dissenting voice. “We wanted to hear what all the fuss was about,” bassist Guy Pratt said. “Most of us thought Parklife was very good.”

Pink Floyd could afford to be gracious in defeat. The Division Bell, released in March 1994, became the band’s first album since 1975’s Wish You Were Here to reach No.1 in both the UK and US. Their 14th studio release also went multi-platinum and turned out to be a lone victory for prog rock in the boom years of Blur-style Britpop and dance music.

The Division Bell should be remembered for its music rather than the intra-band bickering that had blighted the previous nine years.

In October 1985, three years after Floyd’s The Final Cut, founder member/bass guitarist Roger Waters took out a High Court application to try to prevent the band name being used again. Weeks later he informed the group’s record company that he was leaving the band, and that the group were no more.

Unfortunately for Waters, Gilmour had no intention of laying Floyd to rest. “Dave absolutely saw red, and finally got it together to go back to work,” wrote drummer Nick Mason in his memoir, Inside Out. A year later, the Waters-less Floyd made their debut with A Momentary Lapse Of Reason.

Wright, who’d left under duress in 1979, had returned midway through the sessions, but wasn’t made a full-time member again. Instead, his name topped a list of 16 session musicians deployed to help bring the band back from the dead. Gilmour worked briefly with several outside songwriters, and the process was frequently interrupted by calls from lawyers tasked with defending his decision to continue. Waters even tried to stop the new Floyd from touring – but failed.

He went on to describe A Momentary Lapse as “a fair forgery,” but it still reached No.3 in Britain and America, and was promoted with a tour that turned Floyd into the second highest grossing act of 1987.

“I didn’t think it was the best Pink Floyd album ever made,” Gilmour admitted. But it proved that Floyd could still be a commercial success without Waters, the man who’d devised the concepts for The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall.

The first steps towards making The Division Bell began in January 1993 with Gilmour, Mason and Wright jamming in their Britannia Row Studios in North London. Before long, Pratt, who’d played on the Momentary Lapse tour, joined them. It was a dream come true for the bassist who, as a teenager, had watched his colleagues play The Wall at Earls Court. “It was thrilling to know you were playing on a Pink Floyd record,” he said Pratt, recalling that Gilmour gently instructed him to lose “90 per cent of the notes I was playing”.

By spring, Gilmour had moved the operation to his houseboat-cum-studio, Astoria, on the Thames, and he brought in The Wall and Momentary Lapse co-producer Bob Ezrin. Having amassed around 65 of what Mason described as “riffs, patterns and musical doodles,” Gilmour reported that “we had what we called ‘the big listen,’ where everyone voted on each piece of music.”

Ideas were merged or discarded; but so much material was left over that the band briefly considered, then rejected, the idea of releasing some of it on a separate album, including a set they dubbed The Big Spliff – which was, Mason explained, “the kind of ambient mood music being adopted by bands like The Orb.”

The voting system was abandoned when the others discovered that Wright was awarding his ideas the highest possible score, and everybody else’s the lowest. Part of the problem was that he wasn’t a full band member: “It came very close to a point where I wasn’t going to do the album, because I didn’t feel that what we’d agreed was fair,” he said. Soon he was fully reinstated, and scored credits on four of the album’s 11 tracks.

Shortly before the summer, Floyd – joined by Pratt and fellow touring members Tim Renwick Gary Wallis and Jon Carin – entered Olympic Studios in Barnes, West London, and recorded a handful of new songs. They later reconvened on the Astoria and began developing those tracks further. But Gilmour now faced the hurdle of writing lyrics; and unlike Waters, he wasn’t a confident lyricist. Ex-Slapp Happy songwriter Anthony Moore – who’d co-written on A Momentary Lapse – and former Dream Academy singer-songwriter Nick Laird-Clowes would both contribute to The Division Bell. But Gilmour’s then girlfriend, journalist and author Polly Samson, would end up co-writing the lion’s share of the words.

“I started writing things and looking to her for an opinion; and gradually, as a writer herself and an intelligent person, she started putting her oar in, and I encouraged her,” explained Gilmour, who’d spend the day working on the music on the Astoria before going home to write with his soon-to-be wife. “There was,” he said, “a whole invisible side to the process.”

Not everyone was comfortable with the situation. “It wasn’t easy at first,” Ezrin admitted. “It put a strain on the boys’ club, and it was almost clichéd to have this new woman coming in and then get involved in the career. But whatever David was thinking at the time, she helped him find a way to say it.”

Between them, the couple wrote the album’s strongest song, High Hopes. “It pulled the whole album together,” said Ezrin. “It also gave us an idea around which to hang some of the broader concepts.” Partly inspired by Gilmour’s childhood and adolescence in Cambridge, its beautiful lap steel guitar solo evoked Shine On You Crazy Diamond, while composer Michael Kamen’s orchestral arrangement flashed back to the strings and woodwind he’d used on Comfortably Numb.

In the meantime, Floyd dragged some of their vintage keyboards out of storage and sampled their sounds for Take It Back and Marooned. Wright was delighted: “My influence can be heard on tracks like Marooned. Those were the kind of things that I gave the Floyd in the past – it was good that they were now getting used again.”

In fact, the whole album was full of familiar motifs. Dark Side and Wish You Were Here saxophonist Dick Parry returned to the fold. So too did Dark Side mixing supervisor Chris Thomas, who helped oversee the final mix instead of Ezrin. “That was disappointing,” understated the producer.

High Hopes’ themes of nostalgia and reflection were reprised in the Gilmour, Samson and Laird-Clowes composition Poles Apart. Its first verse was inspired by Barrett; its second by Waters. What Ezrin called “the broader concept” of The Division Bell was communication and the difficulties thereof: between friends, wives and lovers, and former bandmates.

The clues were there in titles such as Lost For Words and Keep Talking, the last of which sampled scientist Stephen Hawking’s voice. “It’s more of a wish that all problems can be solved through discussion, rather than a belief,” said Gilmour, who was well aware of the irony considering Floyd’s poor track record in communicating with each other.

However, The Division Bell also seemed to have a subtext: rebirth. On Wearing The Inside Out, Wright cast himself as a man venturing back into the world after years of isolation. “There’s a lot of emotional honesty there,” said Ezrin. “Fans pick up on a sad and vulnerable side of Rick.”

Wright wasn’t the only one being emotionally honest. Gilmour talked about ‘killing the past’ on Coming Back To Life. Many took this as a reference to embracing his relationship with Samson and rejecting the hedonistic lifestyle he’d been enjoying for the previous few years.

Revisiting The Division Bell now, the angst and tension remains clear. On What Do You Want From Me, supposedly inspired by good old fashioned marital strife, Gilmour sounds fired up and frustrated as he dishes out some heavy blues guitar. Play it alongside 2006’s charming if very contented-sounding solo album On An Island, and you can hear the difference.

The album was complete by the new year, and the band began casting around for titles. Nick Mason favoured ‘Down To Earth’; others preferred ‘Pow-Wow’. In the end band friend and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy author Douglas Adams, spotted the words ‘the division bell’ in the lyrics to High Hopes, and suggested that instead.

Although the record suffers from what Pratt calls some “80s production hangovers,” it’s compensated for by Gilmour’s sense of tension and urgency, along with Wright’s welcome presence. Unlike Momentary Lapse, The Division Bell feels like a group effort; and Gilmour was soon telling interviewers that he thought it was the most Pink Floyd-sounding album since Wish You Were Here. Everything from those spaced-out keyboards to the languid guitar solos and Storm Thorgerson’s grandiose cover art compounded his theory.

Waters called it “an awful record,” and Melody Maker likened it to “chewing on a bucket of gravel” – but Floyd’s fanbase disagreed and the album soon topped the charts in 10 countries. Naturally, you can’t help wondering what a follow-up might have sounded like. Bob Ezrin feels the same. “I wish it wasn’t the last Pink Floyd album,” he said. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Mark Blake is a music journalist and author. His work has appeared in The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and the magazines Q, Mojo, Classic Rock, Music Week and Prog. He is the author of Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, Is This the Real Life: The Untold Story of Queen, Magnifico! The A–Z Of Queen, Peter Grant, The Story Of Rock’s Greatest Manager and Pretend You’re in a War: The Who & The Sixties. 

Ministry have announced summer headline shows in the UK and Europe around their planned festival appearances.

Ministry’s summer in Europe will see them visit:

Last year, Jourgensen revealed to Metal Hammer that he will be reuniting with his former bandmate Paul Barker for what will be his band’s final album.

“It’s set in stone,” Jourgensen told Metal Hammer. “We’re going to be working on this album for the next year in between Ministry tours. He’s not going to come on tour with us, that’s [ex-Tool bassist] Paul D’Amour. But when we’re done with the touring schedule over the next year, me and Paul are going to be working in my studio on the final album.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.