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

This is kind of how I know we, as a people, have it too easy. Not even that you can in the span of 30 seconds click onto a website and look up Electric Wizard‘s complete studio discography, but that in another two seconds, you can also find the video of all their splits, EPs and singles as well. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying it’s really fucking easy. Almost too easy. I haven’t been through the full seven and a half hours of the clip above, but something so easy, you’d almost have to suspect it’s a trap and that three hours in, the floor will drop out and you’ll fall into a dungeon.

I know I’d said the Scott Kelly interview would be up this week. I did say that. That interview was supposed to happen Tuesday and it got moved to Friday at 4PM, so it was obviously going to be too late to get it up. Joe Axler of Samothrace was an awesome conversation though, so hopefully you dug that. The Scott Kelly interview was a good one. It’ll be up this week coming, as soon as I can transcribe it.

Audio too this week from Order of the Owl. Monday or Tuesday I’ll have their new EP, In the Noon of the After Day, streaming in full, and it’s pretty killer stuff from the trio, which features former Zoroaster bassist/vocalist Brent Anderson. Definitely worth sticking around for. There will also be a giveaway for some copies of their Cocaine Super Demon 7″, so that’ll be fun as well, and I’ll have reviews of the new Om and Enslaved albums, among others. Eggnogg is playing in Brooklyn tomorrow night at Goodbye Blue Monday, and I have some family-type stuff that requires my presence, but if I can get there afterwards, I’d very much like to. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I’ve got an interview slated with Chad Davis of Hour of 13 tomorrow (he also plays in Tasha-Yar, which I will no doubt ask about) and a bunch of work to do between now and then, so maybe listening to seven-plus hours of Electric Wizard in a row will be good for productivity. I can’t imagine any scenario in which that will actually turn out to be the case, but what the hell, it might be fun to try.

See you on the forum and back here Monday for another album of the summer of the week and more riff-led good times.