Candlemass – Dactylis Glomerata (CD)

Candlemass has spent four decades as the gold standard of European doom metal, but *Dactylis Glomerata* from 1998 marked a genuinely strange detour, arriving without longtime vocalist Messiah Marcolin and leaning into a more experimental, gothic atmosphere. The result is one of the most polarizing entries in their catalog, and also one of the most interesting, a record that rewards the patient listener willing to meet the band somewhere unexpected.