The Pendulum EP is a group of tracks that didn’t quite make the cut for the last Candlemass album The Door To Doom released last year. Six tracks in all, 3 being short musical pieces and 3 being doom-laden metal of high quality. In fact, the songs here would probably be first picks for most bands, but Candlemass are masters of what they do.
For those that don’t know (where have you been?) Candlemass are from Sweden and formed away back in 1984. They have gone through a good number of members with only original member bassist Leif Edling being constant throughout, although rhythm guitarist Mats “Mappe” Bjorkman has been in the band through quite a number of incarnations. At the moment all the members date back to 1987 and beyond including original singer Johan Langquist who has returned to the fold for the first time in over 30 years! They sound on this (and also the recently released album) at their very best.
CANDLEMASS – The Pendulum (EP Review)
The 3 short tracks are firstly a little acoustic guitar piece called “Sub Zero” followed by a dirty filthy sounding bass solo called “Aftershock”. My personal favourite is the last track “The Cold Room” which is a mix of piano and acoustic guitar and could easily be music direct from a horror movie, dark and reflective.
First of the full songs is the EP title “The Pendulum” which opens things and is proper old school Black Sabbath. From its lilting acoustic start, it soon goes into a sweet groove and riff which changes down to something slower and doomier for the chorus. There is another change of pace for the riff which leads into the guitar solos. The heavy bass and rhythm guitar which underscores the guitar solo is heavy and threatening.
Keeping the Sabbath vibes is “Snakes Of Goliath” which is slow and thunderous with one hell of an almighty riff. It also shows Johan’s range off very well. Once again they throw more than one riff into the song with nice changes of mood and speed keeping it interesting. The final song is “The Cold Room” which goes into more hard rock style metal and is the most commercial track on offer here. A little faster in places but with plenty of groove and a strong chorus this brings this EP to a fine conclusion.
Final Thoughts
This might be a collection of songs that didn’t make the album (with some of them still in demo mode) but the quality shines through. One can only hope this all means that they are having so much fun in working together and feeling very creative that we might see this line up stick together long term and them releasing more albums. I do hope so.
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