Deep down in the catacombs of Paris, between piled-up bones, damp air and our own mortality, Candlemass mastermind Leif Edling could be found fighting health problems, as well as being plagued by stress-related fatigue syndrome after decades in the music business. But while he was barely able to get up from his couch anymore, stress-ridden and tired, he used this paralyzing emptiness to pick up his old acoustic guitar and compose the very first melodies of his new brainchild, The Doomsday Kingdom. Originally it was supposed to be a solo album, but as he worked with Wolf-singer Niklas Stålvind, Andreas “Habo” Johansson and his Avatarium colleague Marcus Jidell, they realised that they were all creating something quite special, and a new band was coming together.
They have taken their inspiration, as have many doom bands before them, from the classic works of Black Sabbath, but instead of focussing just on the leaden slower numbers as can often be the case, they have also taken inspiration from the quicker ones. This means that in many ways it is one of the most complex and complete doom albums I have come across. It isn’t all about twisting chords (such as on “The Never Machine”), but also injecting pace. The band state that this is due to bringing in sounds from their NWOBHM influences, but given how much those bands had been impacted by what had gone before, it is Sabbath again, but with a different flavour (there is even an instrumental featuring acoustic guitar, “Fluff” anyone?). Stålvind is an amazing singer, but I did find that there were times when I wanted his vocals to be higher in the mix, and wonder if they had used an outside producer instead of guitarist Marcus Jidell whether the outcome would have been even more powerful. As it is, this is a great album, and one that all fans of Sabbath or Edling’s other bands need to seek out.
