World-class British doom metal band ELECTRIC WIZARD will release its long-awaited new album Black Masses in North America on January 18 via Metal Blade Records/Rise Above Records. The legendary group’s seventh studio album, Black Masses was recorded with Grammy Award-winning British recording engineer Liam Watson (The White Stripes) in London’s Toe Rag Studios. Today, Stereogum premieres the wicked new ELECTRIC WIZARD song “Turn off Your Mind”, calling the track “multi-layered stoner swirl”. Check out “Turn off Your Mind” now at this location.
Long hailed as the true heirs to Black Sabbath, ELECTRIC WIZARD have achieved near iconic status in the metal underground. Now, in league with Satan himself, ELECTRIC WIZARD prepares to annihilate the planet with Black Masses, its “dark prayer to Luciferian heavy metal” via crackling, vintage valve amplifiers set to full overdrive. Pre-release excitement for the record is boosted by the band’s appearance on the cover of the February issue of Decibel magazine, which hits newsstands this week. To order the issue and read the ELECTRIC WIZARD cover story (“Why this Doom Mob Rules”), simply visit this location.
Propelled by gigantic riffs and dripping with dark, bluesy undertones, Black Masses is an ugly, sleazy and dirty album steeped in unruly themes of 70’s exploitation cinema, occultism, substance abuse and narco-satanism. Taken as a whole, the record creates a twisted amalgam of late 60’s dark acid psychedelia and early 80’s satanic metal, all draped in both vile, misanthropic imagery and lyrics.
“This ritual incantation of heavy metal sorcery will break down your psyche as wave upon crushing wave of lead weight acid-laced Doom leaves you numb and broken before our unholy altar,” declared ELECTRIC WIZARD cult leader Jus Oborn when reached for comment. “Violent, bleak and ritualistic, we bow to the black altar of the RIFF. We do not rock, we kill!”
The track listing for ELECTRIC WIZARD’s Black Masses is as follows:
1. Black Mass
2. Venus in Furs
3. Night Child
4. Patterns of Evil
5. Satyr IX
6. Turn Off Your Mind
7. Scorpio Curse
8. Crypt of Drugula
Accessible and exciting yet violent and evil, ELECTRIC WIZARD has been riding a black wave of success since its formation in 1993. The band is an all encompassing paean to “dark and weird subjects” and a true celebration of bizarre low brow art (think: Weird Tales), vintage horror and B-movies, subversive foreign comics and H.P. Lovecraft coupled with a morbid fascination in cults, witchcraft, freemasonry, biker culture and ancient occult sciences and how these dark arts can be applied to music. The quartet’s incendiary and apocalyptic live performances have thrilled audiences the world over culminating in near iconic status amongst true fanatics and devotees of HEAVY music.
In addition to Oborn, ELECTRIC WIZARD features Liz Buckingham (guitars), Tas Danazoglou (bass) and Shaun Rutter (drums / percussion).
“For those who crave Sabbath-like dirges, Electric Wizard has few peers.” – THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE (January 6, 2011)
“Electric Wizard… I dig it.” – Randy “Rocket” Cody, THE METAL DEN
“the most critically acclaimed band of their kind since Black Sabbath. ‘Black Masses’ is like Stonehenge on wheels, hurtling downhill and slamming through the side of your house; it will fuck you up.” – DECIBEL
“Sabbath, Satan, and Lovecraft-nodding…the collection was produced in analog by Liam Watson. And, as in the past, the feedback will blow out your speakers while everything else hypnotizes. Get a taste of those amplifiers” – STEREOGUM
“Why Can’t Life be More Like Electric Wizard?” – THE OBELISK
http://www.myspace.com/electricwizarddorsetdoom
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