Doom metal isn’t just about despair. The ray of light beaming through the clouds from the heavens (whichever one you believe in) both offers something to reach for while highlighting the darkness surrounding you. Candlemass’s second stone tablet illustrates that perfectly. While new singer Messiah Marcolin’s name may have seemed hubristic, his operatic delivery really did liberate the genre from shitty vocalists. His powerful delivery of sermons like “The Well of Souls” and “At the Gallows End” feels like a religious experience.