What’s going to happen between now and when Electric Wizard‘s new album comes out before the end of the year is that information is going to continue to piecemeal out. Before, it was the fact that it’s coming out on Spinefarm. Today it’s the album title and the artwork. Soon will be the official release date and tracklisting. Then you get into stuff like track premieres — which will go to namebrand places like your NPRs, your Pitchforks or whoever — and then an album stream before the release. If there’s stuff like a lyric video, that will be worked in there too, but it depends on the label and the band, when the tour dates are, etc.

Maybe I should be a publicist. Either way, what it goes to show is that the anticipation is high enough for Electric Wizard‘s new album, Time to Die, that every bit of info is considered precious and worth the focus of its own press release. I can’t argue with the approach. Impatient as I might be in the give-it-to-me-now sense, it’s the smarter play to build the buzz leading up to whenever the record actually hits. And sometimes waiting is fun anyway.

From the PR wire:

ELECTRIC WIZARD UNVEIL TIME TO DIE AS TITLE OF FORTHCOMING STUDIO ALBUM

OFFICIAL ARTWORK REVEALED

Electric Wizard have announced Time to Die as the title of their forthcoming studio album. Time to Die is the eighth full-length offering from the masters of aural punishment and is testament to the fact that Electric Wizard continue to be the most uncompromisingly heavy, genuinely twisted and evil band in the world.

This will be the band’s first album release since signing a worldwide deal with Spinefarm Records.

Says Electric Wizard founding member, Jus Oborn:

“All of our albums in the past have had a theme — revenge, drugs, black magick — and the theme of this one is death. Of course, death to us really means rebirth, so this album is a manifestation of a very primal occult belief in the final sacrifice. We have gone full circle — it was inevitable, but we had to do it. We had to kill the band so we could be reborn. It was the only way to ensure we could come back even stronger.”

The artwork, once again created by Oborn, is an extension of that theme; this is further solidified by the LP gatefold image, which will be revealed soon.

Electric Wizard, having just played Hellfest in France, have the following festival appearances lined up for 2014, with more shows to be added:

July 3 Roskilde, Denmark Roskilde Festival (Arena Stage)
July 4 Knebworth Park, UK Sonisphere (Stage headline)
August 16 London, UK Jabberwocky (The Excel Centre)
September 12 Valada, Portugal Reverence Valada (headline w/Hawkwind)
October 10 – 12 Antwerp, Belgium Desert Fest

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Electric Wizard, Live at Hellfest, June 20, 2014

Hard to tell if I’m happier to see this news because it means Electric Wizard will be able to take advantage of Spinefarm‘s worldwide distribution network, or just because it’s solid proof of a forthcoming album, but either way, the Dorset doom legends aligning themselves to Spinefarm via their own Witchfinder Records imprint isn’t a bad thing if it allows them to keep more control over what they do. The title of their next album hasn’t been unveiled yet, but the four-piece have a number of festival appearances coming up, including headlining slots at Hellfest in France and Reverence in Portugal.

Here’s the update, fresh off the PR wire:

ELECTRIC WIZARD FORGE WORLDWIDE ALLIANCE WITH SPINEFARM RECORDS

NEW LP SET FOR RELEASE VIA SPINEFARM, IN LEAGUE WITH THE BAND’S ‘WITCHFINDER RECORDS’ IMPRINT

Visually intoxicating, uncompromisingly heavy and revered for making music and lifestyle one, Electric Wizard have completed work on their new studio album, title to be confirmed; the album will be the band’s first release through Spinefarm Records.

Formed by vocalist / guitarist Jus Oborn in 1993, Electric Wizard (based in the UK’s South-West) have thus far released seven studio albums – an increasingly influential body of work recorded on vintage analogue gear with as little technology as possible intruding on the signal (“Protools is for pussies!”).

Result: some of the heaviest, dirtiest, most evil-sounding audio ever put to tape, and more importantly to vinyl, with both Come My Fanatics (1997) and Dopethrone (2000) being lauded as landmark releases.

A cultural as well as a musical force, Electric Wizard have left an indelible mark on a host of different genres, the likes of doom, stoner and sludge; at heart, however, they stand as an iconic British metal band, cast in the great tradition, with lyrics and artwork reflecting the hypnotic weight of the music, and subject to the same intelligence and detail.

Wreathed in occult ritual and drug-culture references, with classic ’70s horror an inspirational seam, Electric Wizard are poised to turn a page; there’s the new deal with Spinefarm Records, plus – after a nine-year hiatus – the return of Mark Greening (the drummer on Dopethrone), who completes the line-up of Oborn, US guitarist Liz Buckingham, a key member since 2003, and new bassist Clayton Burgess (Satan’s Satyrs).

Fueled by strong emotion and the harder sounds of late-’60s Detroit, the remodeled line-up – isolated by choice, giant stacks glowing red – set about crafting an eighth studio album to both rival and exceed the milestone recordings of the past, with Buckingham keeping things suitably monolithic and the band generally looking back to some of their earliest influences.

Toerag Studios in London was once again charged with capturing ‘The Sound’, and (encouragingly) words like “raw”, “hateful” and “sickeningly heavy” are being traded.

Says Oborn: “Our master plan is this. Real metal!! We stand for rebellion, we are with the kids; we fight, puke, smoke weed, etc… Electric Wizard is an entity, with its own history, its own symbols, its own iconography, and with this new album, we wanted to return to basic values. It’s primitive. We needed to claw it back down to the evil core – sex, drugs, violence, revolution… to go back to being a band that hung out and jammed hard. No teaching songs, just feeling them out. If you jam enough and you are on the same level – artistically, musically, whatever, you gotta be committed – then good music will happen. I totally believe that…”

Electric Wizard will make the following festival appearances in 2014, with more shows to be added:

May 2 Temples Festival, Bristol, UK (headline)
June 20 Hellfest, Clisson, France (Valley Stage headline)
July 3 Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark (Arena Stage)
July 4 Sonisphere, Knebworth Park, UK (stage headline)
August 16 Jabberwocky, The Excel Centre, London, UK
September 12 Reverence Valada, Portugal (headline with Hawkwind)

ELECTRIC WIZARD are: Jus Oborn – lead vocals, guitars | Liz Buckingham – guitars | Mark Greening – drums, percussion | Clayton Burgess – bass

Established in 1990, Spinefarm Records is an international rock and metal label with dedicated offices around the globe. Working with Caroline under the Universal banner, Spinefarm marries the ethos of the independent to the clout of the major, developing signature artists worldwide.

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Electric Wizard, “The Chosen Few” Live at Trondheim Metal Fest 2014

Electric Wizard, Dopethrone (2000)

The Patient Mrs. and I were walking around Ikea tonight, basking in the mediocre consumer hell that is our 30s and looking for a shelf I can put LPs on, since apparently I have enough now to warrant one — also a lamp because with the time change it gets dark in my office before I’m done working — and I couldn’t get Electric Wizard out of my head. They seem to be an immediate go-to association for those moments when you most want to say fuck everyone and everything and drop completely out of society. Ikea on a Friday night will do that.

Then we went to the Costco.

Suburbs, man. Some harsh shit.

I’ve always hated Ikea, and I feel like the worst part is I can’t really complain — we got both a lamp and a shelf, as well as a whole load of oh-yeah-we-totally-need-this bargain bulk crap at Costco. If we get snowed in tomorrow and are stuck until June like in The Shining, I’ll have enough deodorant to get me through. That’s not really something I worry about, but unit prices exist whether you want them to or not and I’m not in a position to be throwing money around willy nilly to not stink. There are bills to pay.

So although we were listening to the much more peaceful Papermoon Sessions collaboration between Papir and Electric Moon — which I’ll be reviewing next week along with Lumbar, or EYE, or Corrections House or whatever it is I find myself wanting to hear because god damn it that’s how I pick records these days — the Wizard were on my mind and I figured Dopethrone was a decent enough cap to the evening. So far so good.

Other than the big box surroundings in that, which was the early going, it was hardly an unpleasant night. I feel lucky when I get to spend real time with The Patient Mrs. that isn’t me working at my desk and she working at hers or the two of us too tired to have an actual conversation, and we got dinner afterwards — she called me interesting! — and I’m looking forward to a relatively low key weekend ahead of what will be a busy week to come, with shows on deck from Blaak Heat Shujaa and Devil to Pay and maybe High on Fire, at least two, maybe three nights in a row.

On that subject, toward the end of next week I’ll probably have few posts up, since Postman Dan — you may recall my travel partner out to Days of the Doomed or know him because he’s generally awesome and seems to know everyone anyway — is flying in on Thursday from Michigan. It wouldn’t really do to be like, “Hey dude, glad you’re here, but I gotta go review some shit for like three hours so I’ll talk to you later. Good to see you though.” Not that I doubt he’d be fine on his own, it’s just rude.

Plenty with which to stay busy through all that though, and I’ll probably find some room in there to talk about some records, tapes, CDs, whatever format it might be. When the Deadbolt Breaks also have a new video that I’ll be posting and there’s a lot of other stuff to come as well, so please stay tuned.

And in the meantime, as always, have a great and safe weekend. Enjoy the Electric Wizard (I know I am), and please check out the forum and radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

It’s a bleak psychedelic dronefest and nobody’s invited when you press play on Blut‘s Drop Out and Kill tape. The UK duo of N.B. and S.M. have released pretty much everything they’ve done on cassette, and listening to the Major Destroyer Records release of this album, which was originally reviewed  on CD, I can hear why. The band’s unremittingly extreme tin-can gnarl comes across even nastier through the analog compression, finding the Dorset-based outfit even more straddling the line between blackened lo-fi and stone-drone sludge, like Electric Wizard‘s misanthropy played at half speed somewhere down the block. Sometimes all you get it low-end rumble and malevolent echoing.

On headphones, with the volume up, the effect is even more grating. Blut‘s underlying drum groove is there — straightforward and slow — somehow managing to cut through a mountain of tonal lurch on opener “Aeon Long Death/Alcoholic on Cloven Hoof,” their anti-you-and-everything-else stance apparent from the very first second of the song. I said when I reviewed the CD that the band were probably unfit for just about any human ears, and I stand by that, since they push extreme sludge to what I consider new heights of fuckall. Whether or not one puts on Blut as the soundtrack to their sunny-day barbecue is irrelevant — they’re genuinely pushing the boundaries of what’s come before them and I consider Drop Out and Kill laudable just for that. That Blut have developed a clear sense of purpose over the last couple of years and releases like Grief and Incurable Pain (review here) and Ritual and Ceremony (review here) and turned spite into aesthetic is where I think they have most succeeded. The farther out they go, the less listenable they get, the better they become. They’re getting closer to (at least what I see as) their goals for the band.

If I’m overthinking it, well, I’m supposed to overthink it. Still, the foreboding drone of “Murder Hallucination” and “Skulls.Coffins.Nails” isn’t happening in a vacuum, and as much as Blut are casting off elements of traditional songwriting — verses, choruses, etc. — they are working in an established sonic sphere of extreme drone doom. Noise aficionados would probably hear Drop Out and Kill and call it straightforward because it has guitar and bass, but when I put on this tape, I hear the roots laid down by SunnO))) and Sleep’s Dopesmoker taken to vicious, dark, new places. That Blut include a side-two cover of Boston outfit Nightstick‘s “Ultimatum” — they call it “Ultimatum (Yog-Sothoth)” — only demonstrates their awareness of their own lineage. It also evens up the sides and gives Drop Out and Kill even more horrifying audio, but yeah, the other thing too.

Fact is, whatever level you want to approach them at, Blut aren’t about to make it easy for you. What they’re going to do — on tape or any other format — is crash and drone and scream and emit some of the most fucked up noise I’ve ever heard. That’s their thing, and whether you hear it on CD or on cassette, if you consider yourself a fan of the sonically abrasive, you should probably hear it. Tapes have the advantage of being cheaper and sounding fucked up. That suits Blut well.

Blut’s Blogspot

Major Destroyer Records

This will be the third time I’ve reviewed a full-length from Dorset duo Blut. Their prior outings, 2010’s Ritual and Ceremony and last year’s Grief and Incurable Pain, were hour-plus excursions into droning sonic torment, the two-piece’s amplified misanthropy brought to bear over the course of extended tracks like “Throne Ritual” and “Death.Mourning.Famine (2).” Their third album carries the band’s motto for its title, Drop Out and Kill, and arrives courtesy of Bubonic Productions (tape release on Major Destroyer). Like Grief and Incurable Pain (review here) and Ritual and Ceremony (review here), the latest outing finds the initials-only duo of S.M. (guitar, noise, drums, vocals) and N.B. (bass, noise, vocals) sonically caustic and abrasive to the point of stomach-turning physicality. To listen to Drop Out and Kill the whole way through is to affirm your ability to sustain punishment – Blut’s feedback-soaked lysergic darkness is encompassing and stabbing at the same time, like being closed into an iron maiden – but the album also takes some steps toward humanity. There is a picture of the band on the back of the CD, for example, to go along with the list of the album’s three songs, and Drop Out and Kill is the shortest of Blut’s full-lengths yet at 59 minutes. That doesn’t mean it’s not a work of ultimately perverted nastiness, just that there’s less of it than last time out. The drums in opener “Aeon Long Death/Alcoholic on Cloven Hoof” also might feel like some capitulation not toward accessibility – the notion is laughable – but at least to some idea of songcraft in a traditional sense. Of course, it doesn’t last, and everything past about 12:20 into the 28-minute track is given to the scathing feedback drone that’s become Blut’s calling card over the last several years. Still, the music prior to at least qualifies as such, and that’s saying something. The subsequent “Skulls.Coffins.Nails” (23:59) is even less friendly, but they close out with “Murder Hallucination (4 Track),” and at 7:27, its low-rumbling psychedelia is even nearer to discernible. Seven minutes? Hell, for Blut, that’s practically a radio hit.

In those moments, a comparison to Electric Wizard’s most unhinged moments is inevitable, but again, if Blut are veering in that direction, it’s only a part of their overall assault and soon enough swallowed whole by their deconstructed cruelties. The brief liner notes – in addition to cursing the Metal Archives, informing that N.B. and S.M. played through Selmer and Sound City amps and featuring a photo of a nude, sneering ‘70s blonde with a snake around her neck – urge the listener to, “play loud and kill yourself.” Not sure a departure from the “drop out and kill” sloganeering they’ve done all along, but worth noting in that volume does have a definite effect on the listening experience for these songs. Even the noisy drone at its most vicious sounds more textured played louder, and in the later moments of “Murder Hallucination (4 Track),” the samples from American Movie highlight the disturbing disaffection of the film within that film while also coming clearly through the murk and creeping horror of Blut’s psychedelia. The guitar at the end of that track, winding leads of laced smoke, are as close as Blut has ever come to melody, and clips from Fahrenheit 9/11 and others lead the way out from the chaos preceding, a kind of minimalism that answers back the samples that begin “Aeon Long Death/Alcoholic on Cloven Hoof” and “Skulls.Coffins.Nails.” Samples play a pretty large part in Blut’s approach overall, but “Aeon Long Death/Alcoholic on Cloven Hoof” is pretty quick to move into a verse of black metal screams offset by cleaner Ramesses-esque incantations. By then the swirl is established over the drums and bass, and though most of the remaining 26 minutes of the song are instrumental – the verse returns after six minutes for a brief appearance – first marching on that riff and then pulling it apart and examining the noisy guts inside, the effect and sense of structure remains throughout, even long after that structure is actually gone to fucked up solos, crashes and, of course, noise. It might be a last scream at after the 11-minute mark, or it might be a sampled screech, but either way, Blut are shortly to go full force into feedback and sustained distortion, so whatever it is, it’s very soon torn to shit.

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The British trio’s second release of 2011, Ramesses’ Possessed by the Rise of Magik follows the Chrome Pineal EP (review here) released earlier this year and 2010’s stunningly bleak second full-length, Take the Curse. Issued, like the Dorset unit’s two prior documents, on their own Ritual Productions, Possessed by the Rise of Magik pushes the three-piece even deeper into the ether-soaked rag of darkened ceremonial psychedelia. At seven tracks/51 minutes, it is Ramesses at their most atmospherically coherent yet, and it seems that with the prolific stage they entered last year has come a full command of their sound and aesthetic. Possessed by the Rise of Magik is as lethal for its eerie ambience as for the abrasion in the music itself.

First and foremost, Possessed by the Rise of Magik is fucked. Taking some of black metal’s lo-fi approach and transposing it onto their dreary, spaced-out riffing, bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson, guitarist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening have truly come into their own, but the record was captured live and it sounds like it. There’s a visceral energy in what they’re doing, and an energy in the tracks that’s almost unspeakable in its potency, but it listening, it sounds like everything’s pushed back in the mix. It’s a hard listen. Richardson’s “clean” vocals on opener “Invisible Ritual” have a desperate howl, and they’re offset by a torrent of riffs and screams that only add to the mash of noise the track presents. It is among the more actively-paced songs on Possessed by the Rise of Magik, and nearly half the length of everything else at 3:38, and, like with Take the Curse, as the album develops, it only moves farther and farther out.

That, too, is a part of Ramesses’ development as a band. Where Chrome Pineal was comprised half of studio material and half of live tracks, Possessed by the Rise of Magik is unquestionably a full-length, and not just for its runtime. Though they provide landmarks along the way – memorable bits for the listener to grasp onto, as with the huge undulating riff that takes hold of “Towers of Silence”’s second half, or the militaristic snare from Greening that sets the rhythm in the opening movement of “Plague Beak,” or even the blatant groove in Richardson’s bass that leads “Duel” while Bagshaw plucks ambient notes behind – it’s easy to hear Possessed by the Rise of Magik as a morass of noise, which I think is just what the band wanted from it. Their sound has grown into this. It’s what their earlier work on 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy was hinting at. But yeah, completely and totally fucked.

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It’s hard to discuss Electric Wizard, the spearheads of an occultic movement within modern doom, and not get lost in either hyperbolic praise, devil references or ’70s horror imagery. Indeed, if you look at the bulk of what’s been said about the Dorset group’s seventh studio album, Black Masses (by myself as well), you’ll find it can be classified in one or all of those categories. Perhaps the best thing I can say about that is that neither the imagery nor the hyperbole are unearned on the band’s part.

Because Electric Wizard are, in fact, one of the most important groups in doom today. Their earlier works like 1997’s Come My Fanatics and 2000’s landmark Dopethrone have an influence that pulsates throughout the genre, and even their most recent outings, Black Masses and its 2007 predecessor, Witchcult Today, have been responsible for setting much of the course thematically for a growing crop of bands. As founder, guitarist and vocalist, Jus Oborn has become the very sort of cult figurehead so many of Electric Wizard‘s songs describe.

Joined in the current incarnation of Electric Wizard by American expat guitarist Liz Buckingham (ex-13, ex-Sourvein), tattoo-covered bassist Tas Danazoglou and hi-hat shunning drummer Shaun Rutter, Oborn stripped down the ultra-fuzzed style of Witchcult Today for the latest album, putting a special focus on the interplay of his and Buckingham‘s guitars and the strength of the songwriting. Since both records were put to tape at Toe Rag Studios in London by Liam Watson, it’s that much clearer that the efforts of Oborn and the band have paid off.

The simplistic brilliance of the opening title-track, the revelatory psychedelic horror of “Turn Off Your Mind,” the misanthropic “Scorpio Curse” and the sexually-charged “Venus in Furs” all seethe with an attitude and atmosphere undeniably Electric Wizard‘s own. And of those who would pretend to their Satanic majesty (see first sentence above), it’s becoming increasingly clear that none of them can capture terrors quite as vivid. There’s only one Electric Wizard, and they didn’t happen overnight. Their demented anthems are unparalleled.

In the interview below, Jus Oborn — a week under the weather with the flu at the time of our conversation — discusses the songwriting process behind Black Masses and some of his more surprising points of influence, as well as the prospect of much-demanded touring in the US, the challenges in crafting memorable choruses, and much more.

Complete Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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This morning I interviewed Jus Oborn from Electric Wizard about the band’s triumphant dark masterpiece, Black Masses. Keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks, but until then, here’s a video made by Raymond Salvatore Harmon using the film El Topo for the track “Scorpio Curse” from said album, which finally gets its official US release next Tuesday. Appropriate as anything could ever be for this song: