Review & Track Premiere: Old Man Wizard, Kill Your Servants Quietly
[Click play above to stream ‘God is Your Friend’ from Old Man Wizard’s Kill Your Servants Quietly. Album is available for preorder here.]
Francis Roberts on “God is Your Friend”:
This song went through a ton of iterations before I settled on the version you’re hearing today. It was almost an acoustic song! I’m glad we switched directions and ended up with whatever the doom metal dance party that’s on the album is. Here are some fun facts about it:
-This song has my favorite guitar “sound effect” just before the second chorus.
-I think this song might have more chord changes than anything else we’ve released.
-The band is tracked live.
-The bass guitar is doubled with a minimoog throughout most of the song.
-The third verse was originally going to have clean “funk” guitar but the tone we recorded with ended up reminding me of early Ozzy tracks and I really liked it so we kept it.
San Diego prog-heavy, heavy prog — or some other combination of those words and probably others — Old Man Wizard will self-release their third and reportedly final full-length, Kill Your Servants Quietly, on Nov. 5. With 100 copies pressed each on LP (due early next year) and CD and 60 tapes, it would be a quiet drawdown to the three-piece’s near-decade together but for the quality of the work itself, which divides into 10 tracks each with a purpose and personality of its own that together create the whole-album impression of a band grown comfortable in a variety of sonic contexts and able to draw together seemingly disparate moods, tempos and progressions with an overarching smoothness of production and performance. Recorded mostly live with just “Your Life (As a Problem)” and “Live Forever” — closers for sides A and B, respectively — made during pandemic isolation, Kill Your Servants Quietly answers 2018’s Blame it All on Sorcery (discussed here) and 2013’s Unfavorable (review here) with a fitting does-what-it-wants realization of who Old Man Wizard are and will have been as a group.
Guitarist, lead vocalist, synthesist, producer and principal songwriter Francis Roberts (also of King Gorm and solo work) remains distinctive in voice and production style, and Kill Your Servants Quietly is defined in no small part by the lush melodies across its 46-minute span, which breaks indeed into two halves neatly, its first five tracks shifting back and forth between slower and faster tempos, beginning with the six-minute gradual build of “I Prayed.” Bassist Andre Beller (also violin), drummer Kris Calabio, as well as Mark Calabio, Drew Peters and Reece Miller provide backing vocals at various points throughout. On theme, “I Prayed” begins a four-song anti-religious — catholic-specific with a mention of tithing along the way — lyrical screed defined by lines like, “Prayed instead of thinking” from that song, “Your love of god is a narcissistic fraud” from the hook of the subsequent semi-title track “Kill Your Servants,” the fetish-hued “Father, please save me!/Enslave me and punish me!” from “God is Your Friend” (premiering above) and “When you look at death’s face/Hope you appreciate/The punishment that you face/Knowing that god is fake” from “I Wanna Know” before “Your Life (As a Problem)” caps with the narrative of hearing a voice that says, “I don’t see your life as a problem/I don’t think it matters either way.”
This could be framed as anything from a coming-out story to being Jewish or atheist, politically left-wing or any number of other things — there’s so much hate to go around — but the rest of Kill Your Servants Quietly moves forward from there, and “Today,” which opens side B, feels purposefully chosen for its sense of freedom from the prior existential drag, replacing the lumber of “God is Your Friend,” the galloping offset of “Kill Your Servants,” and the hairpin-turn chug of “I Wanna Know” with a willfully danceable and thoughtfully executed pop. Heavy rock of the disco era is a tough pull, but Old Man Wizard strut out a bassline under a howling guitar and by the time the hi-hat and the layer of cleaner-toned strummy guitar come in to hammer the point home, there’s no question what they’re up to as a group. Various keys and synth effects add to the build late, but the way elements are added one by one emphasizes the push toward pop even if the catchy payoff hook doesn’t — it does — and they wind their way out on a guitar solo to let the quick drums and harder fuzz, peppered with a quick “ough” to bring back a rock mindset, as if to say ‘enough of that feeling alright about yourself stuff; here’s a song about dying alone in the snow.’
So it goes. “Soldier’s Winter,” self-contained in its storyline isn’t necessarily the heaviest song on Kill Your Servants Quietly, with “God is Your Friend” and “I Wanna Know” earlier on, but the turn to tonal thickness takes the place of some of side A’s tempo trades and presents a new aspect for where the second half of the record goes. The blatant social commentary of “Parasite” is of its era without naming names and feels cathartic while remaining straight-ahead in structure. It is the shortest inclusion at just over three minutes but fits a well-plotted solo and backing spoken layers into that time, a moment of relative intensity that makes its point and gets out before “Falling Star” and “Live Forever” wrap, the former the longest song at 6:28 positioned well as the most progressive and almost exploratory of the proceedings, an extended solo section giving way to a linear build in the middle third that moves back to the verse in the last minute, feeling like it holds off just long enough to make the listener wonder if they’ll get there before they do. That return and the subsequent last chorus crash out, leaving “Live Forever” to stand on its own in a final underscoring of intent.
Though it moves into roll-credits cinematics instrumentally and finds Roberts in a single layer belting out the lyrics, “And I missed out on the whole world according to you/But that’s okay/I’m not ashamed to be myself,” the closer begins and ends folkish in its vocals, with a phrasing that (and this isn’t a dig at all) reminds of “Rainbow Connection” from 1979’s The Muppet Movie, the arrangement behind bringing up synthesizer and strings or string sounds to swell before a return repetition of the quoted lines and those that wrap, one last stir before the and album fade out together. The elements that have made Old Man Wizard a standout band during their tenure are all present throughout Kill Your Servants Quietly. Their engaging of different eras of heavy rock and metal of the ’70s and ’80s. Considered, progressive and unflinching melody and rhythm. The style that finds inevitable comparison points in the likes of Opeth and Ghost while managing to be directly relatable to neither. These are all in the tracks, and more besides, with the interwoven layers of keys and guitar and vocals throughout, but it’s ultimately the less tangible feeling of completeness, the sheer resolution of it, that makes Kill Your Servants Quietly so satisfying. If indeed it’s Old Man Wizard‘s last offering, they go out with their best.
Can hear the Ghost comparison on “God is your friend”. “Kill your servants quietly” reminds me of the first two Queen albums. Intrigued.
[…] -The third verse was originally going to have clean “funk” guitar but the tone we recorded with ended up reminding me of early OZZY tracks and I really liked it so we kept it.”Listen: https://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2021/08/30/old-man-wizard-kill-your-servants-quietly-premiere-review/ […]