Candlemass — Bewitched

JUL 01 1988 · 12:00

Candlemass — Bewitched (1988) Director: Jonas Åkerlund Era: Late 1980s Heavy Metal Video Era (1988) - Swedish epic doom metal during the height of MTV-driven metal promotion; low-budget European production contemporaneous with the global thrash and doom metal underground surge. Extremely high. This video holds dual historical significance: as a foundational visual document of Swedish epic doom metal and as the confirmed directorial debut of Jonas Åkerlund, one of the most influential music video directors of the last four decades. Its lo-fi production values, horror-theatrical aesthetic, and cultural placement at the intersection of the Scandinavian metal underground and global MTV culture make it an irreplaceable artifact for both genre history and director retrospective research. Context: Released in 1988, 'Bewitched' emerges from the Swedish doom metal underground at a moment when Candlemass were codifying the epic doom subgenre. The Nightfall album (1987) was critically foundational — Candlemass, along with Pentagram, Saint Vitus, and Trouble, has been recognized as one of the 'big four of doom metal.' The music video reflects the era's low-budget European metal production culture, where gothic horror imagery and theatrical performance were deployed without significant production resources. Its significance is amplified by being the debut directorial work of Jonas Åkerlund, who would become one of the defining music video auteurs of the 1990s and 2000s. The video thus bridges the Scandinavian extreme metal underground with the emerging global music video culture of the late MTV era. Director notes: This is documented as Jonas Åkerlund's directorial debut in music video, making it a historically significant artifact in his career trajectory. The video was produced in Sweden in 1988 to accompany the song 'Bewitched' from Candlemass's album Nightfall (released November 1987 on Axis Records). It has been described in critical retrospectives as one of the most memorably lo-fi metal videos of its era, celebrated for its earnest low-budget horror theatrics. The YouTube video ID (-3uvf0cn0jo) matches the file metadata, confirming authenticity of the source file against the known upload. Åkerlund would go on to become one of the most decorated music video directors in history — a trajectory that makes this debut a compelling origin document.