OFF: Electric Wizard

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On tor 19 jun 1997 02.21 "Cliff and Pam Wheaton" <cwheaton at MICRON.NET>
wrote:
> Now I'm curious again-Electric Wizard?? A band with that name has got to
> be at least interesting:)

    They another part of the UK neo-doom scene (records by them and
Acrimony both are sold by Rise Above Records, URL accessible from my web
site, etc., etc.).

     EW are a 3-piece and their first album was very much a slow chunky
Sabbathy affair.  Nothing mind-bending by I really enjoyed their "Electric
WIzard/Wooden Pipe" song which is archetypical "UK freak metal", slow and
riffy with blatant Iommiesque guitar squeals.

    Their second album is rather different, and attracted lots of favor
(again, surprisingly) from Kerrang.  Here they've opted to tune the
instruments down to a riduculous pitch and sludge along with a bit more
Kyuss/Hawkwind influence added to the mix.  I haven't seen them live (yet)
but apparently they are a great live experience and I'm told you can
practically see the bass strings wobbling like telegraph wires.  You want a
stereo with good bass response :)

    Much of the second album (I think there's a sample from it at Rise
Above's WWW) _Come My Fanatics_ is long sludgefests punctuated with
SpaceRitualy swooshy-beepy noises.  A few reviews compare it to Space
Ritual, actually--though I don't really see so many similarities (apart
from both being heavy stoner music with Dr. Who sound effects scattered
about).  Good fun, though not as catcy as Acrimony's more lively sound.  It
is probably unbelieveably cool if you are stoned (which I gather the band
is most of the time).  I certainly wouldn't know anything about that, of
course ...

Cheers,
Carl

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Carl Edlund Anderson                           "So that's Terra.  Oohwee,
cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk                             look out wenchlings, here
http://wjh-www.harvard.edu/~canders/hem.html    come the Hawklords."
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon Norse & Celtic, Cambridge     -Lord Lemmy (Hawkwind)
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