 | Tracklist:
1. Vinum Sabbathi
2. Funeralopolis
3. Weird Tales / Electric Frost / Golgatha / Altar Of
Melektaus
4. Barbarian
5. I, The Witchfinder
6. The Hills Have Eyes
7. We Hate You
8. Dopethrone
| Ranking: #44 for 2000 | |
| | other reviews | scyther (4.5)
Rise...rise...rise...rise...rise...rise...rise...rise...Smoke.... |
On 38 Lists
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This album is a sludgy mess.
If you need technicality in your music, close the book on Electric Wizard (henceforth “EW”) and continue your search elsewhere.
EW’s most famous opus and third album is everything good musical output should not be. It’s noisy, messy, lazy, droning, at times incomprehensibly overdriven into the depths of monotony and back.
It chews at your brain and then smashes it in with a bludgeon.
And if you come out alive, you find yourself in a world overtaken with blazon psychedelia and drenched in heavy metal madness. It takes the stoner grooves of Kyuss and Queens of the Stoneage and straps them to slow, plodding Beelzebub Anthems of Doom that move along like an elephant at the gaze of a Gorgon. Et tu Brute?
The instrumentation is simple, the musical content even simpler. An average rock band lineup that employs all of its instruments for one simple purpose: to make the sound as low, dense and bleak as possible. Guitars are down-tuned so as to avoid clarity, the drums keeping a simple and affirmative beat, the vocals just a distorted cry over the madness of the instrumentals. Musicianship"nonexistent.
The album begins with an intriguing voice sample, no doubt taken from an old 70s B-movie, saying “When you get into one of these groups, there’s only a couple ways you can get out. One is death, the other is mental institutions.” Comical, but somehow disturbing in how true it rings for this album. You might feel you’ve gone insane by the end of the sprawling Funeralopolis, ending its 8-minute duration with an intense jam with the vocals screaming out maniacally, distorted beyond comprehension, propelling the dirge into outer space.
Weird Tales is another highlight, an epic in many different parts, starting out with a typical doom jam and making its way into a droning, distorted bass-driven exposition slathered in feedback and building in intensity. An insane atonal lead shrieks out over the ominous instrumentals that speed up and slow down, making for the most dynamic piece on the album. Weird sounds emanate from underneath the muddy landscape. The sludgy instrumentals then slowly decay into a spacey drone section ala Boris.
Barbarian and I, the Witchfinder are the next to faux-mythology-inspired doom pieces, both highlights and masterpieces in the genre. Intense washes of cymbals paint the distorted guitar and bass these tunes that shift through many droning sections and never get old even in their intense runtimes. Strange sounds and creepy wind noises encircle the landscape, frightening in premise. The vocals are powerful and maniacal. Dopethrone concludes the album with another doom metal masterpiece, employing mysterious voice samples underneath the sludgy gloom of the instrumentals.
This is an intense album, that should be played LOUD. If it’s not loud, you won’t enjoy it. Regardless, it’s a masterpiece of its genre and shouldn’t be missed
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never heard of these guys. good review i guess.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
YES. Thanks Kage for reviewing this its one of my favorite albums ever and an overall perfect album. "Vinum Sabbathi" or "I, The Witchfinder" are my favorite songs.
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I've been meaning to check this album out for a long time.
Nice review.
Digging: Dirty Three - Horse Stories
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Man I love this album in small doses, but really the lack of talent gets to me after a while. I love Let Us Prey much more than this, it's so trippy and spaced out yet still heavy. Come My Fanatics...is better too.
Oh, and this is their third album.
| | | Album Rating: 4
Cool review, they're awesome. This is good, but CMF has always been my favourite
| | | Album Rating: 4
[QUOTE=Werny]Oh, and this is their third album.[/QUOTE]
Oh, thanks for letting me know, I thought their first release was not a real album per se.
Come My Fanatics is my favorite as well, actually. That would get a 4.5/5 from me.
| | | Album Rating: 4
Yeah, same here. It's pretty good.
| | | Album Rating: 5
i think it's pretty safe to say this album changed my fu**ing life man. and i guess we'll just say it all went downhill from there hahaha. electric wizard have an obvious love and very large understanding of the occult and of heavy and heavily psychedelic music. awesome record, good review, i like how you mentioned the band Boris! hell yeah.
| | | Album Rating: 5
good review man. This is the heaviest sounding album I have ever heard. Its got such a fucking groove.
Digging: The Flaming Lips - Embryonic | | |
Hell, I swear man, this album gives me fuckin' headaches everytime I listen to it. No, seriousely now PHYSICAL headaches! I've only sat through the whole thing once or twice maybe, because whenever I try to listen to it, the headache becomes unbearable after track 2. It's a good album though, nonetheless.
And, yeah Kage, I really like your reviews. You might go a bit over the top at times, but you sure know how to paint some vivid imagery:
And if you come out alive, you find yourself in a world overtaken with blazon psychedelia and drenched in heavy metal madness. It takes the stoner grooves of Kyuss and Queens of the Stoneage and straps them to slow, plodding Beelzebub Anthems of Doom that move along like an elephant at the gaze of a Gorgon. Et tu Brute?
I mean, this is just great. If the review consisted only of this paragraph, you'd get a pos from me. I've rarely seen such a perfect and vivid description, even in professional reviews.This Message Edited On 01.02.07
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This album is sonic sludgy bliss. You really appreciate it so much more when you're stoned though.
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I heard of these guys about 7 months ago, some of the songs I heard were pretty good but I also thought quite a few of them were horrid.
| | | Album Rating: 5
I was listening to this last night at a friends house Cranked way up, and: Weird Tales / Electric Frost / Golgatha / Altar Of Melektaus has such a killer ending, I wish it would never stopThis Message Edited On 02.19.07
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
This rules so far.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
This is so heavy sweet jeebus
Digging: Circle Takes The Square - As The Roots Undo | | | Album Rating: 4
Dried Muffin Remnants: i agree, this album is amazing stoned- didn't they mean to do that?
Digging: Gang Gang Dance - God's Money | | | Album Rating: 3.5
no they wanted you to listen to it while drunk
Digging: Converge - Petitioning The Empty Sky | | | Album Rating: 4
b-b-but it's called dopethrone... 
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drunken metal
Digging: Kool G. Rap - 4, 5, 6
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
shablaman, i was being facetious
unless you are too...
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