• Rating:
"Legalize Drugs & Murder"
To be concise and direct, the two-decade-long saga of Jus Oborn's Electric Wizard can be summed up in the aforementioned phrase (itself a quote from the title of an EP from a few years ago). A long and obsessive musical trip fueled by psychedelic drugs, often of low level, 70's horror visions, terrifying cosmic images, and brutal crime news. Specifically, "Time To Die" is inspired by the case of Richard “Ricky” Kasso (the name says it all about this guy), a 17-year-old American who in 1984 killed a friend under the influence of hallucinogens during an ill-defined satanic ritual, ending by gouging out his eyes; arrested, a few days later he hanged himself in his cell.
Happy ending aside, the story is mere artifice to provide Oborn and company the canvas on which to splatter black blood and distorted visions. "Time To Die" is the usual flood of riffs heavy as antimatter, that start from the mother land of Black Sabbath to end up watching Saturn swallowed by a sideral black hole. This is what the best Electric Wizard evokes in the end. A physical daze due to the almost tangible specific weight of their doom mixture, which often causes mental but especially physical fatigue when listened to. Yet, at the same time, Oborn never hid his penchant for the acidic vision characteristic of a certain entirely Albion visionariness, daughter both of Hawkwind and early Pink Floyd. Obviously, here space is an evil and terrible place, from which unspeakable horrors come beyond our space-time conception. A vision very similar to that of H. P. Lovecraft.
After two recent albums like the excellent “Witchcult Today” and the less inspired “Black Masses” that smoothed out the edges of the pre-2004 production (massive records like “Let Us Prey” and “Dopethrone”, to be clear), few expected such an inspired and "evil" return to the past. It might be the return to the fold of Mark Greening, drummer of the original lineup, but judging by the almost 30 minutes encompassing the first three tracks, the guys leave zero to public complacency and 1000 to themselves. “I Am Nothing” destroys everything with guitars on Neptune, distorted voices, and a psychedelic noise tail that is terrifying (in the real sense). The title track is an ode to the wildest wah-wah, whereas “Incense For The Damned” slows down midway and becomes a titanium pachyderm that razes, but slowly, your synapses. There are also radio-friendly tracks (Radio Belzebù, obviously) like the stoner crushed by the garbage truck of “SadioWitch” or the cemetery keeper's love song of “We Love The Dead.” The ambient interludes between the darkest space (“Saturn Dethroned”) and the truest paganism (“Destroy Those Who Love God”) are also noteworthy.
We eagerly await to see them on the next cover of Corriere dei Piccoli.
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