The third and last studio album featuring Messiah
Marcolin's vocals, Tales of Creation is Candlemass' concept album
that tells the tale of a man's apocalyptic journey through Hell, only
to awaken and discover it was all a dream.
Concept albums are almost invariably wasted on me.
I never saw the point in them; if I want to hear a good story, I'll read
a book. What's more, concept albums often have this uncanny knack of sucking
like only a concept album can. This is so not the case with Tales of
Creation. There are so many great tracks, vocals melodies, and great
guitar work to be found here, it may be my personal favorite of the three
reissues.
Ok, I'll be honest. Objectively, Marcolin fronted
Candlemass can be pretty cheesy, and there's a fair share of that here.
However, if you can like an album in spite of its cheesiness (or even
better: because of its cheesiness) then you'll totally be into this excellent
work of true doom heavy metal.
Like the other two re-mastered disks, the Tales
of Creation package comes with a bonus disk. Of the three albums extra
material, this is clearly the weakest. You'll get prototype recordings
of Candlemass songs done by bassist Leif Edling's pre-Candlemass band,
Nemesis. (If you have the first Candlemass disk, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus,
you'll now have three separate recordings of the song "Under the
Oak.") The problem is Nemesis can't really play all that well, and
their singer, while passable, doesn't even begin to approach the vocals
of either Marcolin or other Candlemass singers like Bjorn Flodkvist or
Johan Lanquist. It's kinda neat to hear, but only if you're way into the
band. Also, the interview with Marcolin, Edling and Johansson is relatively
weak compared to the great stuff on the other disks.
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