Electric Wizard - Witchcult Today
Candlelight Records - CDL392 - November 20, 2007
By Jack Deming
After 14 years of consistent (albeit at times less than quality) musical output,
Electric Wizard have dished out a commanding addition to the Doom/Stoner metal genre that will have your head swaying slightly in and out of the beat throughout the entire album. Make no mistake, even if this is not your cup of tea, you will no doubt at some point find your head nodding slowly and methodically to the imperious marches and intoxicating grooves of
Witchcult Today. The music never loses momentum, but continually plugs away in an almost swinging fashion, like a necklace being used to hypnotize an unsuspecting and hopelessly inebriated hippie in a 70s horror movie.
Electric Wizard's very livelihood rests in their simplicity, which is part of what makes them such an interesting band, and a very hard one to critique or explain.
Witchcult Today does not feature any standout tracks per se, but rather it features eight tracks that flow together as one entity, and thus should be listened from start to finish. This is a vibe that I really love and that few bands achieve, examples of this most notable to me being
Finntroll's Visor Om Slutet and
Ulver's Themes From William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The most notable aspect of
Witchcult Today is the production, as well as the texture and atmosphere that are created from it. In a sense, the effect of the grating, chunky production of
Witchcult Today does the same atmospherically for
Electric Wizard's sound as the infamous production of
Under A Funeral Moon did for
Darkthrone's. The lo-fi guitars will definitely rip through any cheap headphones if the listener is foolish enough to sacrifice them, but obviously in a much different way than black metal style guitars would. The bass is ludicrously overpowering, but just right by Doom metal's standards, and has a very strange but cool effect on the listener. Essentially it's similar to the feeling of your brain being reduced to mush, in a very good (and not so cliché ridden) way.
Witchcult Today is a breath of fresh air for
Electric Wizard and Doom metal in general, and a fine entry point into the Doom/Stoner genre for new listeners.
Electric Wizard have not released an album of this caliber since 2000's
Dopethrone, and I applaud and welcome their return.
Official Electric Wizard Myspace
Official Candlelight Records USA Website
