Crow’s blog

Ah, the wonders of that popular networking site with its little bulletin board.  It was in this way that I found out about this particular event.

As for In Gowan Ring, I found out about them due to a now defunct entity called World Serpent, who sheltered a number of quality acts under their distribution umbrella, including Current 93, Nurse With Wound, and many others.  At the time the first In Gowan Ring cd was released, I was buying pretty much everything World Serpent handled, so of course I bought that first cd, a haunting little disc called "Love Charms".  In addition to being haunting, it was charming, odd, and more than a little bit strange, with B'eirth's hushed voice floating over moody strings, acoustic guitars, and other instruments.  Every so often, songs would degenerate into manic piping and fluting, or wander away on the audio equivalent of a burbling brook.  I was hooked.

It wasn't until 1999, five years after "Love Charms" was released, that I first saw them live.  They played in the studio at KALX in Berkeley (where my brother was, and still is, a DJ) with The Two Dimensions (who are now Faun Fables).  Later that day, they did a full set at the Stork Club.  Since then, I've seen them (or him, as the case sometimes is) at a book store (Adobe books, I think) in S.F. and in the lobby of the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz.

This current show, despite the lofty sounding venue name (although, according to a review by Brad, it means "house of ham"), was at the house of some guy named Darren.  I e-mailed him to reserve a space, and he later e-mailed directions.  His house was on the west side of San Francisco, and by the time I got to the city on Saturday, the fog had already rolled in, turning a summery afternoon into a decidedly wintery evening.  I got there early, but stayed in the car and read awhile before mounting the brick stairs to the front door of the house.  The house itself was part of a row of houses, squashed together in typical S.F. style.  I idly wondered what the neighbors would think, but figured that an In Gowan Ring performance would be pretty quiet.  When I finally knocked, I was greeted by Darren's partner (girlfriend or wife?) whose name escapes me now, and Darren himself.  Inside, a spread of fine snacks had been laid out.  I got myself a plate and filled it with cheese and olives.  There were a few other people already there, sitting and talking quietly.  Pretty soon we were all talking, which was nice because I don't usually do well in "party" situations where I don't know anybody.  I guess it worked this time because we all had something in common.

My brother, Greg, showed up shortly before the music got started.  In Gowan Ring, for the evening, was just B'eirth (or B'ee) and Jessamyn, who joined him on harmonium, sticks, bells, and sublime backing vocals.  B'ee started off with some new songs, my favorite of which was called something like Whispering Wind.  Throughout the set, which lasted over two hours (including an intermission so people could eat more cheese), he gave some insight into the inspiration behind the songs.  Behind the two of them, a faded landscape painting dominated the space above the fireplace.  Inside the fireplace, and on the mantle above it, candles glowed.  Other candles burned throughout the house, and the electric lighting had been reigned in by dimmer switches.  It was an intimate setting, and one that complemented the music perfectly.  There were even pillows strewn across the floor for people to recline on.  At one point, I kicked off my shoes and lay back with my eyes closed, imagining that I was at home.  B'ee pulled out a few traditional songs, including Crazy Man Michael (or Mad Michael), and the American song Silver Dagger (also covered quite well by The Hanes Family).  At one point, he sang a Serge Gainsberg song, called Chanson de Prevert, which he explained was a song about a song (Chanson de Prevert translates to "Song of Prevert", I believe).  He later sang an original song about Chanson de Prevert, which he explained was a song about a song about a song.  Other songs sung (in no particular order since I wasn't writing them down) included To Strum a Glassy Stem (Darren had a glassy stem somewhere, but claimed in just moped when he tried to strum it - a demonstration was urged, but it never manifested), Train to Rome, The Seer and the Seen, Zephyr Through the Willows, New Song, The Carnival is Empty, Along the Straggling Way, Sad Song, Crack of the Sun, and many more.  The oldest song played was written in 1990, and the newest was written just months prior to this performance. 

At the end of it all, Sheila McCarthy (Dawn McCarthy's sister and drummer extraordinaire) showed up with some friends and everybody fell to chatting.  A number of people left, and after some more talk, B'ee played a Bob Dylan song (not sure which one, but he mentioned that it had also been sung by Sandy Denny).  At this point, it was even less like a concert, and more like a small get-together at which one of the guests just happens to be a supremely talented musician.   We all thanked Darren and his girlfriend (?) again, and made our way out the door and into the cold, foggy summer streets of San Francisco. 

Now I'm going back and re-listening to my stack of In Gowan Ring and Birch Book cds.  It's great music for these troubled times.  A perfect antidote, really.

Sifting through more boxes recovered from my mom's garage, I finally found a box of old flyers.  It makes me wonder how many people actually bother filing away such things.  I'd say about 1 in 10 flyers actually has artistic merit.  Most of them look like they were created by lazy 10 year olds.  Not that there's anything wrong with 10 year olds, but they sure aren't good at making flyers.  Still, I always appreciate genuine, D.I.Y. effort, so I think I'll sift through the stacks and see if I can recover some interesting ones - the really good and the humorously bad. 

Here's one with some personal significance.  I found it sandwiched between the pages of a copy of Devon Morf's old Wajlemac 'zine (which, for some reason, I have a whole stack of - anybody want one?) It's the flyer for the one gig that Backslide (the band I was in, in case you missed that post) ever played, if one fails to take into account the  birthday party we did.

I can't really remember what any of the other bands sounded like, but I vaguely recall that they were more in a pop-punk vein.  I think Atomic Influence might have been the only band with an actual release.  Maybe I'll do a web search and update this if I find out anything.  Maybe.

Anyway, as far as flyers go, this one is pretty decent.  The band logos are all legible.  It even has a stop sign and a fire hydrant.  How punk is that?  Oh wait, stop signs aren't punk.  Never mind.

Nice little map though.  And four dollars?  That's what I call an admission price.  Of course, this was one of those "you get what you pay for" events.

Support local music!  Even if all of the bands are gone and mostly forgotten.  In this case, maybe it was because they didn't get the support they needed.  There's a lesson in that, isn't there?

Silly rhymes aside, this is an account of the Boris instore at Amoeba Records in Berkeley, on June 22, 2008.

I got the wristband that functioned as an admission ticket to this event way back when I stopped by Amoeba on the night I went to see Bela Tarr's "Man from London" (see a number of posts back).  Time does indeed fly, and last night, all of a sudden, it was time to go see Boris.

I almost didn't make it in time.  There was an accident involving a car and a couple of motorcycles which clogged the freeway for more than half an hour.  Obviously, there were people in that mess who were having a much more difficult evening than I was, so I tried to keep things in perspective.  Watching the beautiful sunset helped.  It looked like the sun was going down behind a huge plume of smoke (not unusual right now, as it seems that most of California is on fire at the moment).  In retrospect, I think it was just an interestingly back-lit fog bank over San Francisco, which of course is always enshrouded by fog this time of year.

As it turned out, I finally made it, parked, and ran up the street to Amoeba, getting there just before they started playing.  I checked my bag (forgetting to take my camera out), received some free earplugs, and managed to worm my way through the crowd to where my brother and some friends were standing.  The "stage" set-up had taken the place of where the second bank of registers used to be, in the jazz room.  There were three (I think) video cameras on tall tripods ready to record the proceedings, and the aisles were packed with expectant attendees. 

Moments later,  Boris stepped onto stage, starting off with a song which I believe was from their newest release, "Smile."  (a disclaimer here:  I only have two Boris releases, "Pink" and "Smile" - I've been afraid to take a dive into the extensive pool of extremely limited Boris releases out there, as I tend to be a completist once I start buying a band's cds, hence my minimal Boris collection). 

After the first song, with its soft vocals and psychedelic meanderings, the band kicked into overdrive, sounding like what I'd imagine Motorhead would sound like if they were a Japanese psych-rock band.  The drummer, Atsuo, was particularly interesting to watch, with his exaggerated expressions and rock star antics (he dressed the part too, with a white silk shirt and white gloves).  The three core members all sang (I'm not sure who the fourth member was, but now I'm wondering if it was Ghost's Michio Kurihara, who guests on the new album - I've seen Ghost, but is was long enough ago that I don't really remember what he looks like), but Takeshi did the bulk of the singing, which meant he was a pretty busy guy because he played a double necked guitar too, with one bass neck and one six-stringed neck.  Meanwhile, Wata kept her guitar squalling and screaming with waves of feedback that she somehow managed to wrangle into piercing, psychedelic melodies.  I was definitely thankful for the free earplugs, situated as I was mere feet from a bank of Orange amplifiers and the P.A. system. 

Oh yeah, and they used stage smoke, which wafted out through the store and formed miniature fog banks, sometimes obscuring the band.  At one point, I looked up and saw one of the video camera guys poking up out of a fog bank, looking like one of the apexes of the Golden Gate Bridge on a summer evening - seemingly disembodied and floating on a blanket of whiteness.   It made me wonder how much of it was pouring out the open side door, and whether anybody would think the store was on fire.

The screaming, crunching noise of Boris' instruments continued, offset by the calm vocal delivery of the three core members.  I can't remember the last time I experienced something this heavy.  The heaviness was particularly evident on the slower songs, and could be felt very satisfyingly through the floors and walls, and by extension through my entire body. 

I used a Stanley Turrentine record to waft away the stage smoke when it got too thick, and I could see one or two other people doing the same, using various other jazz artists.

Instore appearances are notoriously short, but Boris pleasantly surprised me by playing for nearly and hour and a half.  We all wanted more, but were informed that John Law had decreed that it was time to end.  We were also asked to give big round of applause, not only for Boris, but for the tattoo parlor next door for allowing Boris to play against the wall shared by the two stores.  It made me wonder if anything vibrated off the shelves on their side of the wall.

On the way out, we were all handed free commemorative posters (like they almost always do at the Fillmore in S.F.), and free Southern Lord sampler cds (which, among other things, features a live Boris track).  Free show and free stuff! That's great!

On the way home, I watched the orange moon rise over the eastern hills, and thought that it was an appropriate color indeed.

I had a choice between going to the show at the Great American Music Hall on Friday, like everybody else I knew who was going, or going alone to the Brookdale Lodge show the following night.  I chose the Brookdale Lodge because not only is it closer to home, but it's in the Redwoods and is purportedly haunted.  So what if I had to go alone?

The Brookdale Lodge is a strange, storied place.  It was built back in the late 1860s, opening its doors for the first time  nearly 100 years before I was born.  Over the intervening years, it has changed hands a few times, burned down, been rebuilt, remodeled, and a hotel wing and parking lot have been added.  The dining area has a creek flowing through it, and back in its heyday it was a magnet for the rich and famous.  Of course, after its heyday it was a magnet for gangsters and other shady types, and it is said that murders happened there frequently, most likely in the meatlocker, if the psychics are to be believed.  There were accidental deaths too.  A young girl named Sarah Logan drowned in the creek inside the dining area, and another drowned in the, since removed, kidney-shaped pool above the Mermaid room.  Check out the main Brookdale Lodge (or inn and spa, as it is now known) site here.  For information about ghostly activity, go here.

With all this in mind, I arrived and wandered in.  The Lodge had a pleasant, musty smell, and throughout the night I'd catch vague olfactory impressions that reminded me of childhood - a kind of aimless nostalgia that I couldn't trace back to any specific time or event.  A number of people were milling around, and I honed in on the merch table, since there didn't seem to be anybody collecting money for admission yet.  I ended up buying the very reasonably priced "Gentleness of Nothing" tour e.p. from Jesse Sykes, who graciously thanked me for my purchase. 

After I got my entrance fee sorted out, I wandered more, checking out the dining area.  I could see the infamous drowning site, bathed in the greenish light filtered through the pale green skylight roof.  Below the roof was a strange disk, perhaps 10 to 15 feet in diameter and made of the same material as the skylight.  The information in the lobby tells us that it's light up at night to look like the moon.  Jesse Syke's bassist, Bill Herzog, reported from the stage that he thought it looked like a UFO.  Either way, it was odd and enchanting.

Later, in the bathroom, I found a rather despairing message scratched into the wall above the urinals:  You guys are the closest things to friends that I have left.  I wondered if the message was referring to the urinals, people using the urinals, men in general, or somebody specific.  Given the history of the place, the possibilities were interesting.  Maybe a ghoooost wrote it.

Oh, wait, this is supposed to be a music review, isn't it?  Barn Owl, from San Francisco, were up first, and consisted of two long-haired guys doing echoey things with a guitar and harmonica.  Using these, they created a sustained drone, to which they eventually added another guitar and wordless vocals, all filtered through echo-laden effects.  Towards the end, the guitar turned loud and crunchy, and one of the two started pounding on a floor tom.  One could almost imagine a miasma of patchouli and pot smoke drifting around their heads.  I found myself being of two minds about their performance.  On one hand, the drone served as a nice soundtrack for the stage setting and the general ambiance of the lodge itself.  The stage backing was an old, stone wall and fireplace, while above, a half-functioning chandelier provided faint illumination.  The left of the stage was the infamous Mermaid room, above which a girl had drowned.  To the right of the stage, through curtained doorway, and visible through windows set high in the wall, was the dining area, in which another girl had drowned, so the echoey ambience of Barn Owl took on extra-musical significance.  On the other hand, they were rather one-dimensional.  The drone was nice and meditative, but not really evocative in the way that drone music can be.  The crunchy bit at the end represented the only real shift in their method of attack, and it didn't really add any emotional weight to the proceedings.  Still, it was a decent way to start the evening.

After they finished, I went outside to watch bats flit around the lights.  I overheard the guy who books the show mentioning that he'd heard one of the security guys deadpan, "Is the next band going to have more harmony and rhythm?"

The next band, Infantree, did indeed have more harmony and rhythm.  In fact, they were the evening's odd band out, with a bastard mix of bluegrass banjo, prog-rocky vocals, percussive acoustic guitar playing, and vintage keyboard sounds.  They started with an stomping instrumental which really allowed the banjo to shine, and then moved through a set of tightly-played songs in a sort of Rube Waddell or Eric Mcfadden vein, with a song composed by the keyboardist sounding more like Tom Waits.  They even handed out free cdr copies of their demo, which is good, but not as good as seeing them live.  Definitely a band to watch though.

After they finished, I went outside and listened to a group of people discuss a fatal car accident that had occurred out front earlier in the day.

After a short wait, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter hit the stage and worked their way through a beautiful set of alt-country/folk/rock whathaveyou.  On her studio recordings, Jesse Sykes reminds me a bit of the Cowboy Junkies, with her husky, hushed vocal delivery, violin embellishments, and the yearning tone set by most of her songs.  Live, the list of instruments was stripped down - just guitar, bass, and drums, with occasional harmonica.  The guitars were loud and crunchy, with the "lead" guitarist sometimes going off on drunken tangents.  Jesse's voice reigned it all in though, keeping the mood haunting and pensive, which of course was perfect if you happened to be playing in a haunted lodge. 

Earth were up last, and they plodded through a set of country-tinged drone metal.  In preparation for their set, the audience, myself included, seated themselves on the floor.  Some demented biker-type wandered in, saw everybody sitting on the floor, and exclaimed, "what the fuck?  I ain't seen nothing like this before!  What are you guys protesting?  Are you guys tree sitters?"

The guy in front of me said something about protesting McCain.  I turned to the questioner and said, "no, we're floor sitters"

Biker:  "Why"

Me:  "Because there aren't enough chairs."

Biker:  "Are you a cult?  Don't drink the fuckin' kool-ade, man.  Don't drink the fuckin' kool-ade." (wanders off, mumbling).

So, anyway, Earth played.  I hadn't remembered their keyboard/trombone player from last time I saw them, but it was a cool addition.  Perhaps I was tired, but this time out I found my attention wandering.  The songs didn't really seem to go anywhere, which is a shame, because usually I like this kind of music.

I took Bear Creek Road home, and rediscovered the fact that you can see pretty much the whole Monterey Bay area from the road where it crests the hill.  I could see lights from buildings surrounding the darkness of the water, and the moon above.  I couldn't see the part that was on fire though, it was hidden by a hill. 

...and more than a dollar short.

I'm really not sure what the point of doing this is - writing down ten songs listened to on random mode, but I suppose it has something to do with that all-too-human tendency to wonder what strange and embarrassing things the party host keeps in the medicine cabinet.  Of course, I never look in other people's medicine cabinets, I'm too busy scoping out their cd racks and bookshelves.  Ah, now I understand...

Night Soil Man "Time to Die"
Paul Roland "Abdul Alhazred"
Rautakilju "Assau Haj"
Current 93 "A Song for Douglas After He's Dead"
Deep Turtle "Perdido"
Eleni Karaindrou "The Weeping Meadow"
Klakki "Holidays"
Neurosis "To the Wind"
Storm & Her Dirty Mouth "Crazy Love"
Blue Oyster Cult "Nosferatu"

Follow this link to a review for a cd that I played on.  I'm one of the "others."

Tod A., who for all intents and purposes is Firewater, used to be in a band called Cop Shoot Cop, who apparently got hassled a lot by the police when they toured.  Cop Shoot Cop sounded angry and weary, with harsh percussion backing Tod's city-hardened vocals.  When Mr. A. moved on to form Firewater, the sound changed to a mesh of musical styles, with the band often sounding like an Eastern European gypsy outfit, with the Big Black-ish guitars of Cop Shoot Cop replaced by violin, accordian, and piano, amongst other things.  Firewater contained a revolving cast of characters, and after awhile they seemed to vanish. 

As it turns out, Tod left the country when The 2004 "elections" went horribly awry, and only now has he come back - now that the current administration isn't long for the world.  He's come back with a new cd, The Golden Hour, and a new palette of sounds weaving their way through his songs.  His voice is still the same - a world weary snarl, but where the band used to have an Eastern European sound, they now have a more middle-eastern/asian flavor.  The liner notes state that it was recorded in India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Isreal, and it looks like many of the musicians were local to these areas.  The cd is a fresh melting pot of ideas, boiling over with disgust and anger - a good portion of which seems to be aimed (as it well should be) at the Bush administration.

They opened their set at the Bottom of the Hill with one of those songs, Hey Clown, featuring the memorable chorus of "Everybody say, hey clown/We're gonna put you in the ground/We had it all and then you threw it all away/Everybody say, hey clown/You turned our happy upside down/We're gonna burn you flag/And piss on your parade, piss on your parade."  A great way to start the evening.  The band featured Tod on guitar, shakers, and vocals, a trombone/trumpet player (Avi Leibovitch, I think), a second guitarist, bassist, drummer, and a brilliant percussionist named Johnny Kalsi who nearly stole the show with his percussive genius - he had some sort of double-headed drum with a curved drumstick, and I'll confess my ignorance here as to exactly what kind of drum it was.  Leibovitch's trombone and trumpet playing was also exquisite.  By the end of the evening, they'd played nearly every song from The Golden Hour, and a couple from their first album, Get Off the Cross... We Need the Wood for the Fire (Some Strange Reaction and Bourbon and Division).  This was just fine by me.  The first and most recent cds are my favorite.  The ones in the middle are good, and grow on the listener, but the two cds he chose to draw from for the evening hit the listener with the most immediacy. 

It was a sold out show too, which is good.  At one point, Mr. A. remarked that he hadn't been sure, due to Firewater's long absence, whether anybody would show up.  I'm glad we did.  After a lengthy encore, and saying goodbye to my brother (who remarked that Firewater had been added to his list of bands that he would want to keep playing no matter how tired he was), I ran up the hill (they don't call the venue Bottom of the Hill for nothing, you know).  One thing you must realize about this is that by this time it was nearly 2 in the morning, and my day had started the previous morning before 6.  I should have been absolutely exhausted.  But I ran up the damn hill.  That's how good Firewater was.
 

I just finished up a school year of serving as the night host at a science camp.  This meant getting the campers (somewhere between 100 and 200 fifth or sixth graders) to bed at night and then getting them up in the morning, and of course taking care of any emergencies in between.  What's the best way to get that many kids up at once?  Blasting music, of course.  Here's my most recent I-pod playlist for waking up kids:

Goran Bregovic "Kalashnikov"
Dengue Fever "Sui Bong"
Edmund Welles "Big Bottom"
Kari Rueslatten "I Manens Favn"
Joseph Spence "The Crow"
Loituma "Levan Polkka/Leva's Polka"
Lila Downs "Pinotepa"
2 Foot Yard "Octopus"
JPP "Vals efter Jan-Olof Olsson"
A.P.P.L.E. "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
Buffy Sainte-Marie "Starwalker"
Tracy Chapman "House of the Rising Sun"
Dengue Fever "One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula"
Dan "If You're Happy and You Know It"
Chirgilchin "Doshpoulour"
Crow Tongue "Wake Nicodemus"
Vig Mihaly "Gypsy Songs" track 2
Tiny "Loneliness"
The Hanes Family "Dire Gelt"
Tom Lehrer "The Elements"
Jesca Hoop "Big Fish"
Klakki "Holidays"
Mari Boine "Etno Jenny"
Ex-Girl "Souvlaki"
Firewater "Balalaika"
Kathleen Yearwood "Somebodies' Looking for Their Voice"
Ex-Girl "Jet Mogura"
Faun Fables "I'd Like to Be"
Vig Mihaly "Gypsy Songs" track 9
Dar Williams "Better Things"
Faun Fables "House Carpenter"
Greg Graffin "Don't Be Afraid to Run"
Yat-Kha "In A Gadda Da Vida"
Current 93 "Misery Farm"
Skyclad "No Deposit No Return"

Some kids dance.  Some just look confused.

Ten songs, written down and reported.  I almost always play my I-pod on shuffle.  Music is one of the few areas of my life where I constantly want to be surprised. The shuffle function often offers startling juxtapositions of sound.

Birch Book "The Trip Goes On"
Paul Roland "Cthulhu"
Paul Chain "Water of the Verify"
Kathleen Yearwood "Three Hated Chords"
In Gowan Ring "Tangles on the Vine"
Townes Van Zandt "Dollar Bill Blues"
Kristin Hersh "Your Ghost"
Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers "Envy (I'm A Mess)"
Tom Waits "Cemetery Polka"
Celtic Frost "A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh"

In the middle of Candlemass' set, bassist and founding member Leif Edling took the mic from new vocalist Robert Lowe (of Solitude Aeternus fame), and asked the audience, "how many of you were at the Stone?"  Five or six hands, including mine, went up.  It later occurred to me that there were a number of people in the audience at Slim's who weren't even born when Candlemass last came through the area and played the now defunct Stone on Broadway.  It was, after all, seventeen years ago.

I feel old.

The first time I heard Candlemass, they weren't even called Candlemass yet.  They were called Nemesis.  Leif Edling sang.  His voice was, in some ways, more suited to the music than those of the vocalists who came later.  He didn't reach those high notes, but instead moaned along with the music like he'd really, truly lost all hope.  It was nice, in an extremely maudlin sort of way - especially the song Black Messiah, which was later reworked to less much effect on a mid-period Candlemass album.

I feel older.

Like I said, I saw them at the Stone back in 1991, when Messiah Marcolin was handling vocals.  He was quite a character, with his monk's habit and, er... imposing girth.  He exuded energy, but I can still remember the terror of audience members when he jumped off (or was it merely threatening to jump off - memory eludes me) the stage.  I seem to remember him thunking down on the floor after everybody in the vicinity vacated the area - sort of like air rushing into the temporary void created by lightning.  Heavy metal thunder.  The songs were great too, especially the ones from the first album, although I preferred the previous vocalist, who, I remember reading, was little more than a session musician. 

Fast forward to the present.  Candlemass has gone through a few other vocalists, none of them lasting for more than a single cd.  Messiah returned, then went away again (that almost sounds like something from the Bible, doesn't it?).  Finally, Robert Lowe, from the world's foremost Candlemass sound-alike band, Solitude Aeternus, shows up not only sounding like Candlemass, but being in Candlemass.  A darn fine job he does of it too.  At the show, he arrived on stage wearing an overcoat that made him look like an evil (this is heavy metal, after all) sea captain.  The stage was punctuated with a number of white, waist-high crosses - it's kind of funny the way heavy metal bands have co-opted that symbol.  I'm not sure what Candlemass' stance on religion is.  They seem to vacillate back and forth on the subject.  I noticed the guitarist was wearing a cross too, though.  Song-wise, they seemed to favor the first and most recent albums, which was fine with me.  They played my two favorite Messiah-era songs as well - At the Gallows End and Samarithan - the latter being the final song of the evening, right after the first encore of Black Dwarf, from the last cd with Messiah.  They also played my two favorite songs from their first album, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (great album; too bad about the name), Solitude, and The Sorcerer's Pledge.  Robert Lowe did a great job on all of the material, but he did seem to click best with the songs from the newest album, King of the Grey Islands.

Oh Yeah, Daylight Dies opened.  They sounded like early Katatonia, with melodic riffs and growled vocals.  Nice, but ultimately kind of boring. 

Check out the Candlemass Myspace site here.