Legendary British doom outfit, Electric Wizard, will release a special limited edition “crystal meth” pressing of their current 2 disc live-to-tape album, Black Magic Rituals and Perversions Vol. 1. out now via Spinefarm Records/ Witchfinder Records. Pre-orders are now live at the links below. Watch their new raw, uncut and uncensored video for “Black Mass” here!
Pre-orders are now live here:
https://electricwizard.lnk.to/blackmagicritualsandperversionsvol.1
Originally released in December 2024 and recorded into a 16-track tape machine, capturing their essence, their malevolence, Black Magic Rituals and Perversions Vol. 1
is as heavy as one would expect from The Wizard.
“It’s raw as fuck,” boasts
Jus. “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.”
As the COVID pandemic took hold in 2020,
Electric Wizard wondered if they might ever play live again. Out in the wilds of the English Westcountry where singer/guitarist Jus Oborn
and guitarist Liz Buckingham live, the band descended into their crypt-like jam space to make a live album like no other.
“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,”
adds Jus. “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.”
Opening with the enormous
Dopethrone, and taking in signature apocalyptic
doom staples like Witchcult Today,
Satanic Rites of Drugula and the ever-destructive
Funeralopolis, the set here shows how powerful and dominating The Wizard can be.
Jus
says he wanted to capture a feeling like that of
Motörhead’s classic No Sleep ’til Hammersmith (1981), or the sense from
KISS’ ALIVE! (1975) that you were getting a window into something, a world the
band created. It’s also, he says, an opportunity for a band as big and cult-like as
Electric Wizard to bring something from metal’s dirty underbelly into the light, if only for the purposes of freaking out the unprepared.
“We’ve always been trying to drag the underground into the overground,”
offers
Jus. “Rather than pretending to be playing some big stadium, arena show.”
A soundtrack to the end of the world? Come this way, my fanatics.
Electric F*cking Wizard
awaits…
Black Magic Rituals and Perversions Vol. 1 track-listing:
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