Dactylis Glomerata

Candlemass disbanded in 1994, after the release of the EP Sjunger Sigge Furst.[1] Main songwriter and bassist Leif Edling formed a new band called Abstrakt Algebra with singer Mats Levén, drummer Jejo Perkovic, guitarists Mike Wead and Simon Johansson. Abstrakt Algebra released their eponymous debut album of experimental and progressive metal in 1995.[2] The album received some good reviews but was not a commercial success.[1][2]

Edling composed music for a second more progressive Abstrakt Algebra album and started recording it with a different line-up,[3] which included keyboard player Carl Westholm and guitarist Patrik Instedt replacing Wead and Johansson, at Sunlight Studio, Stockholm, Sweden in the Autumn of 1996.[1] Soon problems emerged with the recording studio and the producer and Edling's finances dried up.[3] Music for Nations, the British label which had issued the previous Candlemass albums, offered Edling to finance further recordings in a different studio if the album was released as a work by Candlemass.[3] Edling, who was on the edge of bankruptcy and a mental breakdown, agreed to this condition and rearranged the songs to adapt them to the heavier doom metal sound of Candlemass.[3] He also composed the new songs "I Still See the Black", "Molotov" and "Karthago" for the album.[1]

His old bandmates declined Edlin's request for collaboration,[1] so he recruited Swedish guitarist Michael Amott, renowned for his work with Carcass, Spiritual Beggars and Arch Enemy and a declared Candlemass fan, to beef up the guitar sound on the tracks.[3][4] Meanwhile, Levén had joined Yngwie Malmsteen's band and Björn Flodkvist, who Edlin had met while working at Sveriges Radio P3 and coming from the Swedish alternative rock band Gone, was selected as singer.[1]

A band composed by Edling, Amott, Flodkvist, Instedt, Perkovic and Westholm re-recorded during a weekend in May 1997 the basic tracks for the old Abstrakt Algebra songs and for the new compositions "I Still See the Black", "Karthago" and "Wiz" (originally called "Blue Wizard") with the help of session musicians at Swedish Broadcasting Corporation Studio 4 in Stockholm, Sweden.[1] Those three days of recording were Amott's only involvement with Candlemass.[4] Overdubs were added by several other musicians at two other studios of the same city.[1] The final mix, performed by Edling and engineer Uffe Östling, joined the new recordings and more overdubs until after September 1997.[1]

The album took about 18 months to be completed and was released on 13 April 1998 by Music for Nations.[1] The Japanese edition featured the bonus tracks "Container" and "Thirst".[3] The title comes from the plant Dactylis glomerata, the flower of which Edling is allergic to.[3]

Dactylis Glomerata was reissued in 2006 in a 2 CD edition by the Swedish label GMR Music and by Peaceville Records in 2008. The second disc contains the Abstrakt Algebra sessions recorded by the band in 1996 and extensive liner notes by Edling.[3]

Dactylis Glomerata received positive reviews, but was a commercial failure. Canadian journalist Martin Popoff praised the "trippy, not cheesy" production and Björn Flodkvist's vocals, considering the album "closer to stoner rock than self-serious doom".[5] Rock Hard reviewer remarked how different the sound of Dactylis Glomerata is in comparison with the "classic" first four Candlemass albums, lacking "their anthemic, epic arrangements", "the theatrical element, which has always characterized the vocals of Messiah" (Marcolin), and featuring elements of space rock in several tracks like the "monumental 'Dustflow'".[6]