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Album review: Electric Wizard – Black Magic Rituals & Perversions Vol. 1
Apocalypse now! British doom legends Electric Wizard provide the soundtrack to the end of the world on self-recorded, direct-to-tape live ritual.
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Electric Wizard announce live jam-room album, Black Magic Rituals And Perversions Vol. 1
“It’s like a lost ’70s black metal demo rehearsal session,” say the Dorset doom titans of the straight-to-tape recording captured in their crypt.
- Words:
- Nick Ruskell
Electric Wizard have announced the impending release of a double live album, recorded in their rehearsal room, Black Magic Rituals And Perversions Vol. 1.
Wanting to preserve a document of the band's then-current form as lockdown started in case they never performed live again, the legendary doom outfit went into their rehearsal crypt somewhere in the Westcountry to record the tracks directly onto a 16-track tape machine.
“We’d been gigging for two years at that point, around America three times, going to Japan and Australia, and we were sounding pretty good by the end of it,” says frontman Jus Oborn, who operated the recording gear himself. “When the pandemic happened we thought, ‘Fuck it, maybe we’ll never play again.’ So we went into the jam room and played the songs to get them on tape to capture how we were playing at the time.”
“It's raw as fuck,” he continues. “It’s like a lost ’70s black metal demo rehearsal session or something. It’s raw, nasty, screaming in your face. I always promised Electric Wizard was like rats in your face. This is verging on it.”
Though no audience was present, Jus says they took inspiration from classic live albums like Motörhead’s classic No Sleep 'til Hammersmith, or KISS’ ALIVE!, not going for perfect performance, but getting across the real sense of the WIzard in full, loud, doomy glory.
“It was a more about capturing atmosphere and capturing energy,” says Jus. “I was really excited by the idea of just recording us playing purely live to tape and making it sound as raw as possible, like an old, lost recording. We used shitty mics, crappy old tape machine, put it together as fast as possible and just went for it. No one's sitting down, no one's got headphones on, we’re all fucking headbanging, just going for it.”
Black Magic Rituals and Perversions Vol. 1 tracklisting:
1. Dopethrone
2. Incense For The Damned
3. Black Mass
4. Witchcult Today
5. Satanic Rites of Drugula
6. Scorpio Curse
7. The Chosen Few
8. Funeralopolis
Black Magic Rituals and Perversions Vol. 1 is released on December 13 via Spinefarm
