Wizard Bloody Wizard

Album review

It is hard to say if the reference in the title to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is in a spirit of tribute or sarcasm. That the founder and sole survivor of the original line-up, Jus Oborn, worships Black Sabbath is not in doubt; but it is nonetheless perplexing that he chose to make the direct reference on the least Sabbathian of all nine Electric Wizard albums. The veteran of doom metal, with nearly 30 years of service under his belt, if we go all the way back to Lord of Putrefaction, seems to be rejecting the competition of who can be the heaviest, and more generally, rejecting metal sounds to evoke a period where the first steps of heavy metal were being taken in a psychadelic haze. To take a recent album, Wizard Bloody Wizard is much more clearly in the vein of The Night Creeper by Uncle Acid and the Dead Beats, than of Black Sabbath's 13. Voluntarily or otherwise, it is clearly demarcated from With the Dead by his old accomplices (Mark Greening, drums, and Tim Bagshaw, bass and guitar, performed With The Dead in 2014 with the singer from Cathedral, Lee Dorrian). The production, overseen by Oborn and Liz Buckingham, his guitarist wife, hidden daughter of Tony Iommi, is the most vintage of the vintage.

Far from metal's comfort zone, Electric Wizard dares to retrace its steps back to the dawn of the 1960s, when even Pink Floyd could bring you out in a cold sweat (The Reaper has notes of Careful with That Axe, Eugene or Astronomy Domine's Ummagumma), or when Iron Buttefly invited us into their Garden of Eden (Necromania, Wicked Caresses). Even if we are a long way from Dopethrone, the faithful nevertheless will find this a very reasonable album all in all, with See You in Hell or Hear the Sirens Scream in the vein of other well-known influences on the group (Pentagram, Witchfinder General, Cathedral…). To go a bit further with this project, the group would be well-advised to obtain an old-fashioned keyboard… ©JPS/Qobuz