UMUR "Chapter VI" is the 5th full-length studio album by Swedish doom metal act Candlemass (despite what the album title might suggest). The album was released through Music for Nations in May 1992. It´s the successor to "Tales of Creation" from 1989 and features one lineup change since the predecessor as lead vocalist Messiah Marcolin has been replaced by Thomas Vikström. Marcolin had a serious falling out with some of the other members of the band while touring in support of "Tales of Creation (1989)", and left the band mid-tour. "Chapter VI" would be the last album release before Candlemass initial split-up in 1994.

Replacing a frontman like Marcolin must have been a daunting task for Vikström, as the former had such a distinct sounding voice and stage presence. And let´s establish right away that Vikström is not able to replace Marcolin and add anything resembling his predecessors uniqueness. Less will do though and Vikström is not a poorly skilled vocalist by any means. His voice and singing style are just a little more regular heavy metal/power metal styled and as Candlemass have also added keyboards and a little more pace and traditional heavy metal/power metal elements to their music, "Chapter VI" is not the most doomy album in the band´s discography. Those tendencies were already introduced on "Tales of Creation (1989)", but they are even further explored here.

The material on the 8 track, 46:26 minutes long album are well written and the listener is treated to loads of powerful heavy riffs, blistering melodic guitar solos, and heavy rhythms. So "Chapter VI" is in many ways a strong release by Candlemass, if you listen to it with an open mind and don´t expect it to sound like -era Candlemass. The sound production is a bit on the thin side (the bass drums sound pretty horrible), but it´s overall a decent sounding release and a 3.5 star (70%) rating isn´t all wrong.

Time Signature Temple of the dead...

Genre: heavy metal / doom metal

"Chapter VI" did not do well in terms of sales, which lead to Candlemass splitting up effectively splitting up and going on hiatus for a good handful of years, before returning in 1998 with a couple of more psychedelic albums.

"Chapter VI" certainly is not my favorite Candlemass album, and I think that the reason is that some of the doom and gloom of the previous releases is missing from this album, many of the tracks being more uptempo. Also, the use of prominent keyboards on this release add both a more gothic sound and, unfortunately, also make the chees-o-meter go dangerously high.

This is not to say that this is a bad album. Many of the uptempo tracks range from decent to quite good, and a track like "Where the Runes Still Speaks" is an awesome epic doom metal track (which would have been even more awesome with less keyboards). And there are plenty of other interesting ideas scattered throughout. As a whole, the album is just not up to scratch compared to most of Candlemass' discography.

I think that another reason why this album sold poorly could be that it was the first since their debut album to not feature Messiah Marcolin's vibrato-riddled operatic acrobatics. I must say that I think that the vocalist on this album Thomas Vikström does a very good job and rivals any other vocalist that has graced Candlemass.