ELECTRIC WIZARD - 'Wizard Bloody Wizard' (2017)

04 December 2017
ELECTRIC WIZARD - 'Wizard Bloody Wizard' (2017)
  • Лейбъл: Spinefarm
  • Издаден: 2017
  • Aвтор: Ивайло Александров
  • Оценка:

It's not easy to create a style, forge a series of masterpieces in it, then being left by the other two from the band and bring it back to life with totally different people. Still, Jus Oborn, left alone after the 'Let Us Prey' tour (2002), recruited as lead guitarist Liz Buckingham, who is still part of the ELECTRIC WIZARD, and from then on he started the never-ending personal changes in the rhythm section. But the band remained on the map and did not stop releasing albums - some really interesting, others - weaker. The brand new 'Wizard Bloody Wizard' is moving somewhere in the middle. 

The main drawback of the 'Wizard Bloody Wizard' is the noticeably lighter sound. There is no hint of the ugly sludge roar in the ELECTRIC WIZARD's music, and the heavy fuzz is polished and abraded. The production itself is far from bad, but the clean guitars, the crisp rhythm and the forthcoming vocals of Jus do not work in favor for the six tracks of the album. Because at the moment ELECTRIC WIZARD sounds more like a band that wants to sound like ELECTRIC WIZARD, but a bit more listenable. The doom is still here, but the heaviness is missing and the sound is closer to the occult psychedelic rock of Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats than the heavy stoner doom we are used to hear from ELECTRIC WIZARD.
 
Not that the 'Wizard Bloody Wizard' is a really weak album - many young stoner bands would like to make exactly this record in search of a label deal. The songs are a typical occult horror film, if you listen to the lyrics and the music is typical stoner doom with the last song 'Mourning of the Magicians' is a classic, lenghty 11-minute ELECTRIC WIZARD nightmare. The problem is that even after 10 spins of the album I can not get rid of the feeling that I'm listening to Uncle Wizard & the Electric Deadbeats.