Sleazy, doom-laden, honest balls to the wall raw metal: Electric Wizard are back with a new album that takes its influence from the likes of Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath and cranks it up. This owes nothing to the music scene from any year later than 1973, with no effects or studio trickery, just a band out to make music they can live with, and an ethos they can live by. Singer/guitarist Jus Oborn says, “Real heavy music… really basic heavy rock, blues-based but brutal. I think a lot of modern heavy music has disappeared up its own arse… it’s too pretentious and technical. We wanted to get back to that primal sound… over-amplified Blues… Heavy, heavy super fuckin’ Blues, total snail-paced funeral boogie for this 21st century hell. I guess it’s meant to be hopeless, but it’s also defiant and unbroken.”
The guitars and bass are being cranked with distortion, to make the sound rich and even heavier, while they concentrate on playing riffs that float through the air in exactly the same way that concrete doesn’t. They slow it down, and sometimes they even speed it up, but at the heart there is honest to goodness evil sludgy blues, but with a vitality that escapes most doom bands. This isn’t depressing or moribund, but is out to grab the heart and ears and smash them into a pulp. In many ways it is very simple, but when it is played this well then who cares? Solid, immediate, essential for anyone who enjoys this style of metal.
