Swedish doom legends Candlemass have been quite busy of late, keeping consistent with their formula of squeezing out an EP in between full-length albums by releasing The Pendulum, which follows up their excellent The Door to Doom from 2019 and offers up five demo tracks and the outstanding title track. "The Pendulum" is a fast paced, crunchy slice of massive doom, Johan Längqvist's fiery vocals again at the helm, soaring over a wealth of massive riffs courtesy of Mats "Mappe" Björkman & Lars Johansson, the latter also dropping in a tasty solo. "Snakes of Goliath" is a slower, Black Sabbath styled number, haunting keyboards drift over dirge-like wah-wah guitars, Leif Edling's bass booming in the background and Jan Lindh's drums steady as ever. The trio of "Sub Zero", "Aftershock", and "The Cold Room" are short little musical interludes, eventually perhaps to be a part of some fully realized songs on their next full length, here short acoustic guitar or bass passages meant for bigger and better things, while "Porcelain Skull" is a song penned by Edling that was used on the recent Avatarium album The Fire I Long For (a side band he helped form), given the royal Candlemass treatment here. Heavy and majestic, their version provides an alternate take on a strong composition, and it's cool to hear Johan singing the track after you've already gotten used to Jennie-Ann Smith vocal on the Avatarium album.
As a stop-gap till the next full-length Candlemass album, The Pendulum EP does a fine job. Recommended.
Track Listing
1.
The Pendulum 04:59
2.
Snakes of Goliath (Unreleased Demo) 05:16
3.
Sub Zero (Unreleased Demo) 01:16
4.
Aftershock (Unreleased Demo) 01:35
5.
Porcelain Skull (Unreleased Demo) 05:29
6.
The Cold Room (Unreleased Demo) 01:23
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