Review Summary: Slashed to pieces is your fate, unleash berserker rage none shall escape.
Establishing themselves as one of the best new bands in doom metal, Electric Wizard unleashed their 1997 album
Come My Fanatics... upon the world. It marked a turning point for the genre, where slower and heavier songs became favoured over the faster songs of before. The band gained a cult following and so the fans eagerly awaited their next offering, but nothing could have prepared them for the aural onslaught that is
Dopethrone.
Opening with a short clip from a 1985 episode of 20/20,
Dopethrone arrives in spectacular fashion with album opener
Vinum Sabathi. Straight away one of the band’s greatest assets is at the forefront, their ability to write memorable and impactful riffs that demand your attention. This is only displayed further on
Funeralopolis, featuring a fuzzy and distorted guitar line that will stay with you long after the song is over. The track starts off slow, but allows itself time to build up to an explosive climax, with Jus Oborn shrieking his typically misanthropic lyrics such as
“Nuclear warheads ready to strike, this world is so fucked let’s end it tonight!”.
Dopethrone can be crushingly heavy, but not in the traditional sense of double bass drumming and blistering solos. The doomy riffs create an atmosphere that is quite unlike anything else you will hear from a regular metal band, and before you know it you are completely engulfed in the hatred and pessimism this album possesses. When Jus isn’t expressing his hatred for humanity, he likes to sing about mythology and Satanism on songs such as
Weird Tales and
I, The Witchfinder. The former is a 15 minute song split into three parts, meaning it never becomes boring or repetitive (which is a problem some people have with the doom metal genre as a whole). It slows down around the mid-point and transitions into sinister soundscapes, where Jus’ vocals take a back seat to the fantastic bass and drum work of Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening.
I, The Witchfinder is a song about exactly that, a man who hunts down witches and makes them pay through torture. This is vividly described through the lyrics, and the instrumentation could very well represent the hunt, creeping towards the start with a repeating guitar line but transitioning into frantic drumming and frenzied guitars towards the climax.
On the occasion that this is your first time experiencing Electric Wizard, you may find the production to be challenging, with the vocals occasionally inaudible and drums sometimes lacking the impact of your average metal album. However the lo-fi quality of it only adds to the atmosphere and those who can get over the unconventional production methods will find the dark, alluring charm of the album unavoidable. In this sense, the production is very much like that of a Darkthrone album. It isn’t fantastic but that’s the way it is supposed to be.
If you’re looking for a lively album with creative drum patterns and inventive solos,
Dopethrone most likely isn’t the album for you. It can be intense and overwhelming at times but if you can brave the storm you will understand why it is hailed as one of the best doom metal albums in recent memory.
