Electric Wizard – “Witchcult Today”
Electric Wizard – Witchcult Today
Rise Above
THE WIZARD!
After the less-than-stellar album, We Live, Electric Wizard returned with their 2007 doom-laden sludge fest, Witchcult Today. Faithful accolades can rest assured; the harbingers of doom are back and stronger than ever. Each track is dripping with heavy psychedelic drones and monolithic riffs. And yes, it’s heavy – very, very heavy.
The production is sharper than any previous album in spite of the band opting to use dated studio equipment to record. The unfurling guitar is fuzzed-out, and yet is not lost in the haze of reverb and distortion. The result is a very ominous and distant heaviness, like an opaque spirit dissipating through plumes of weed-smoke. The behemoth title track, “The Chosen Few” and “Satanic Rites of Count Drugula” are what you’d imagine a spiteful, phantom rocking out to Black Sabbath would sound like.
Jus Osborn leads the cursed procession, expressing ample drugged-out enthusiasm in his infernal hymns. His delivery finds a perfect fit for the tone of the album; this is some of his best vocal work yet. This is especially evident on tracks like “Torquemada 71” and “Dunwich” (the latter standing out as EW’s liveliest song yet). Psychedelic freak-outs are abundant as expected, specifically in “Raptus” and the cosmic-odyssey “Saturnine.”
Uninitiated listeners beware: grooving as these songs are, every one of them is undeniably sinister. None of the 70’s nostalgia that’s found in the band’s fiendish sacraments is glamorized. Instead, everything is bleak, dark, and bogged down by molasses and paranoia, as if someone has just slipped you something fierce and now you’re surrounded by a circle of hooded figures wearing bloody, goat-heads and chanting in Latin. Of course, with songs like “Black Magic Rituals & Perversions,” what can one really expect?
Electric Wizard’s unholy fire hasn’t burned out just yet and Witchcult Today is the undeniable proof. After five albums and the departure of all but one original member, these Wizards reclaimed their title of “Heaviest-Band-in-the-Universe” in triumph.
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1.) “Faithful accolades?” Do you mean “faithful acolytes?”
2.) I’m pretty sure Sunn O))) holds the “Heaviest Band in the Universe” title.
3.) Mastodon just released an album full of metal psychedelic enough to make Pink Floyd proud. Why is no one talking about this?!
4.) No matter how many exposed tits they put in the liner notes, this record, from end-to-end, is still FUCKING BORING!