Electric Wizard – Black Masses

When Electric Wizard is concerned, three things come in mind weed, Satan and doom metal. After the successful “ Witchcult Today”, the cult veterans of stoner doom metal arise again from the depths of the underground for their 7th complete studio album “Black Masses”.

First Of All, Electric Wizard has been around for about 18 years, playing a very crucial role in the evolving of the stoner doom ( or whatever seems to stick with that) sound , especially with albums like “Dopethrone” or “Come My Fanatics”. Nevertheless, this album I more like a 70’s psy-rock record in a distorted and down-tempo way. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as its offers something new and innovative to the fans (always talking for open minded ones). So, after an extensive use of a bong combined with inspiration Electric Wizard composed 59′ of pure acid necrodoom.

Moreover, the interesting thing with this L.P is not only their little change of their sound, but also the structure of the songs. To be more specific, tracks like “Satyr IX”, “Venus In Furs”, “Scorpio Curse” start with a riff that is evolving more and more as seconds pass by, transferring you in a really high mental level. This is achieved by mixing the starting riff with some drones or even with the use of keyboards, making souls to peak in a dangerous way that no one can describe. Furthermore, it must be mentioned that in record exist tracks “Turn Of Your Mind”, “Black Masses», that do not have the classic Electric Wizard sound, adjusting a more experimental style coming out undoubtedly from the 70’s psychedelia.

As for the lyrics, they are highly inspired by 70’s horror movies, H.P Lovecraft and of course Lucifer all combined by extensive drug abuse. Last but not least, it very amusing the fact that the album was recorded by really old school computers and machines fulfilling with this way the whole 70’s feeling of the L.P (For those who are interested of these machines you can check on their facebook page).

Summarizing, please do not wait for another “Dopethrone”. On the other hand, “Black Masses” is a really respectable and simultaneously good work ,without even having a bad song, keeping the titans of stoner doom still alive and making our world more doomed and black.