It’s healthy to admit when you’ve misjudged something.
When perma-stoned metal masters Electric Wizard dropped the single ‘See You in Hell’ from this newest offering, I admit I wasn’t keen. It seemed a little too simple; too stripped-back; lacking the dense, smoke-wreathed production or gargantuan, stretched out riffs that have become the band’s trademark. It sounded like a step back. But snap judgements are almost never a good thing, and much like the effects of a strong medicinal brownie, the impact was gradual, insidious… but when it hit, it really fucking hit.
Electric Wizard have been accused of being stylistically ‘samey’ throughout their career, but a glance through their back catalogue shows some subtle yet distinctive morphing of their sound with every release, giving each album its own distinct personality. They’ve been sludgy; psychedelic; melodic; achingly slow; nimble and up-tempo; but always heavier than a truck-full of bricks being dropped on a fragile skull… followed by the truck. This album marks another shift – a sound leaning away from the atmospherically drugged-up Lovecraftian aesthetic of much of their more recent stuff, and nodding more obviously towards heavy blues and fuzzy hard rock in the vein of Blue Cheer and, yes, early Black Sabbath (the Sabbath-worship EW have always been open about has never been more front and centre than the title Wizard Bloody Wizard; in fact, the band’s name itself is just a combination of Sabbath tracks ‘Electric Funeral’ and ‘The Wizard’).
The result is an album which has already proven divisive among fans, but which this writer is confident will, in time, be remembered as a left turn the band were absolutely right to have taken. It would have been easy to churn out another funereal, doomy, molasses-like effort; instead, Electric Wizard have dug deep into the sound of the bands that inspired them, lathering things in their own nihilistic, vaguely tongue in cheek horror movie preoccupations (just check out that album cover), and coming up with a huge stinky bud of straightforward, stripped-down, riff-driven 70s-flavoured stoner rock goodness.
‘Necromania’ stomps along at a quick clip, Jus Oborn’s sneering vocal delivery telling the tale of a lady who gets her kicks from death, centred around a chorus which is bound to absolutely slay in live shows. ‘Hear the Sirens Scream’ is a lengthy mammoth of a track, yet continues the album’s lithe pacing with some very Vol. 4-esque riffing and spry, propulsive drumming from Simon Poole. Album closer ‘Mourning of the Magicians’ is the closest to ‘classic Wizard’ – if it can honestly be said that there is such a thing – with a lumbering bassline* and swirling, wah-drenched guitar providing the album’s most blissfully battered, hypnotic track.
Overall, Wizard Bloody Wizard is a delicious surprise, like a THC-laden Kinder Egg. It isn’t Dopethrone, no; but then it’s not as though Dopethrone has disappeared from the face of the earth, never to be listened to again. I for one am more than happy to continue on the old red-eyed death march with the Wizard, for as long as they keep rewarding the chosen few.
*Bassist Clayton Burgess, who joined the band for their last album (2014’s excellent Time to Die), is proving himself to be the band’s secret weapon; his playing on both albums provides a deep, sonorous backbone to the guitar riffs that perhaps act as the Wizard’s more obvious draw, and he gives an invaluable groove to this track in particular.
