Album review: Electric Wizard, 'Black Masses'
3 stars (out of 4)
British doom-metal giants Electric Wizard return with their latest lineup (only vocalist-guitarist Jus Oborn remains from the band’s initial, 1993 incarnation) but with heaviness intact. If anything, some of the tempos on “Black Masses” (Rise Above) have shaken off the sludge and now feel a bit friskier. But there’s no cause for lovers of low-end rumble to be alarmed; this quartet still registers ink-black on the happiness scale (not for nothing does the album title reference Black Sabbath’s dire classic “War Pigs”)
The twin-guitar attack and heavily distorted vocals, moaning about all sorts of horrific hallucinations, are tarted up with the occasional funeral bell or Mellotron orchestration (“The Nightchild”). Concrete-crumbling riffs and melodic hooks rise out of the gloom. There’s also a bombastic, tongue-in-cheek aspect to much of it that suggests Oborn and his bandmates enjoy their theater. Songs such as “Crypt of Drugula,” complete with thunder-storm sound effects, might sound like they’re played for laughs. But by the end of the instrumental track, full-on creepiness takes over and you feel like you’re inside the crypt as the last shaft of light is extinguished. For those who crave Sabbath-like dirges, Electric Wizard has few peers.
greg@gregkot.com