Reviews
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.
Take a trip into the weird world of the Wizard this summer with new book Come My Fanatics: A Journey Into The World Of Electric Wizard.
Legendary British doom cult Electric Wizard have announced the release of an authorised book, coming on June 22 via White Rabbit.
Written by journalist Dan Franklin with input from the band, Come My Fanatics: A Journey Into The World Of Electric Wizard takes a look into the shadowy, weird world of one of metal's most enigmatic and freaky bands.
In a statement, they revealed that the book will feature "extensive interviews with the band and anyone else they deem worthy to speak to their legacy, the book takes a kaleidoscopic look at the world the band conjures in all its chaotic and drug-addled intensity." It also features an intro on the importance of the band by Kerrang!'s own Nick Ruskell.
Covering three decades of one of the heaviest bands on Earth, the synopsis says it all.
“In 1993, in the market town of Wimborne Minster in Dorset, the heaviest band in the world was born. Led by guitarist and singer Jus Oborn, Electric Wizard began as an untameable power trio. They inhaled the iniquity of their lives and vomited it out in colossal waves of doom metal, synthesising the forbidding local landscape, biker culture, video-nasties, black magic rituals and titanic doses of psychedelics.
“In 1997 they released their revolutionary second album, ‘Come My Fanatics’ [and] then, after triumphant and calamitous tours of the USA and following the release of arguably the heaviest rock album ever recorded, 2000’s Dopethrone, Electric Wizard all but imploded, destroyed by the very reality they were fighting against. However, when guitarist Liz Buckingham joined Oborn on guitar for We Live, they drew a magic circle around themselves in a new line-up that went on to explore deeper occult horrors on modern doom classic Witchcult Today onwards."
Commenting on the book, author Dan says, “The existence of Electric Wizard is a thrilling aberration in the British musical landscape. For their fanatics, this book goes deeper into their world than anyone has ventured before. For the uninitiated, it reveals the abominable excesses of the Wizard. Once you get into this group, you can’t get out. I’m particularly happy to be spreading the bad vibes of Come My Fanatics with White Rabbit who are unhealthily committed to unearthing the forbidden treasures of our culture.”
Says Lee Brackstone of White Rabbit on the book, “I first published Dan Franklin in 2010 in a journal called Loops. Little did I know that 13 years later we would be reunited, working together on perhaps the heaviest and most occult band biography ever committed to the page. If you are a fan of Electric Wizard and their meticulously visioned world, soundtracked by the eternal riff, this book will be as essential as any quality doom metal album to hit the shelves this year. If you are not, then beware, and enter at your own peril. For here lie demons.”
Read this: The story of doom metal in 29 songs