Review Summary: That's a cross-faded King Cobra on the album cover, for those who haven't noticed yet.
To address this band by their most reputable title, 'The Heaviest Band in the Universe' (go home Metallica), is to interpret their status among listeners of Doom Metal to quite an accurate point. Every ranking list on every doom-related forum has the Wizard placed easily in it's top-5 bands, often next to their more stoner-oriented peers Sleep. What really parts the Wizard from the other heavy bands of it's like is not some god-like musicianship or wider-audience elements of appeal - it's their unapologetically diabolic stance to the making of their music and the branding of their style. To their target audience and, to an extent, the even wider margins of metalheads in general, the Wizard's image and sound are nigh instantly recognizable and synonymous with the, for lack of a better word, 'stereotypical' image of a Doom Metal band - Sabbath influenced, long haired brits cloaked in black rocking out a demonic, titanium-plated, impenetrable sound barrier of snail-paced riffs, reverb-drenched wailing vocals and solos which zap through the Universe like a gamma-ray burst. Justin Oborn was set from Wizard's genesis to craft a band akin to Black Sabbath at their apex in the early '70s - dark, heavy, and vastly popular among the disenfranchised youth of the time.
Did he succeed? It is my argument that he exceeded even that. By no means am I saying the Wizard exceeded the immortal Black Sabbath, but among the modern Doom Metal listeners and line-ups, Electric Wizard enjoys a demigod status, their satanic imagery is instantly recognizable and their sound is, technically and categorically, much heavier than Sabbath.
A look at the band's workings and goings-on at Let Us Prey's release shows a period slightly before the achievement of every single accolade I previously referred to them. While commending Wizard's consistency in sound, this album is, ironically, quite musically varied from their previous established sound. Moreover on that point, Let Us Prey is sonically removed from every other release in Wizard's entire discography up to date. The eponymous first album was a doom-sprinkled classic stoner release not far removed from Sleep or Cathedral's early work. Come My Fanatics was an even darker, slower, fuzz-ridden second-effort which established the sound which the next release, Dopethrone, would attempt to amplify. Dopethrone would come to be their most famous and widely-listened release, though personally I regard it as among their weakest. With this new fourth release, the band chose to self-produce.
"We were really into the idea of recording then, this pretty technical album.
We wanted to be experimental, like trying out some horror movie type stuff, just to see how it works. Each song was like an idea, we didn't write it. We just got an idea, and went with that for how we wanted that to sound."
- Justin Oborn, June 2009
Going into recording with this mindset, it can be said of Let Us Prey that it is Wizard's equivalent to Black Sabbath's Sabotage - only, instead of going for a more commercial, rock based sound, they doubled down on their already dark sound and, in my opinion, succeeded in transfiguring it into something duly more sinister.
Personally, as a fan of Doom and Electric Wizard, I find this album their hardest to warm up to. The projected atmosphere of gritty, psychodynamic mania is stylized in every song - the entire album simply blends together, and I would recommend listening to it as a whole instead of song-per-song. The simple experience of each track is emphasized here more than any other release, the lyrics are nonexistent - literally not even contained in the album is a list of lyrics - deliberately done so the impression of the song and Justin's distorted, reverb-soaked wails rise from beyond the seventy-ton wall of fuzz-clenched guitars, unceasing drum assaults, and headache-inducing bellows of Tim Bagshaw's iron bass-strings and strike the listener's ear with a more subjective note.
"Let Us Prey is classic doom. There`s a fast song on it, a bit Stooges kind of song. And also a mysterious horror movie soundtrack song.
Even though there`s different stuff it`s all dark and heavy. I don`t think we`ll ever do a happy song, someone shoot me if we do..."
- Justin Oborn, March 1st 2002
With numbers such as A Chosen Few, Master of Alchemy, and The Outsider, the albums 'core sound' is displayed. Slow intros displaying what are some of Oborn's most satanically delicious doomy riffs, with the solos soaring to the thermosphere, echoing along with the vocals. In truth, the solos here are not unlike those found in Come My Fanatics, but they're blended and wrenched much tighter to the overall structure of the song rather than being the melodic 'solo-section' part of the track.
Half the time, you won't notice that Oborn's even started strumming a solo - it's all wound up, buried under the many-layered composition.
The deviation songs are, to say the least, curious endeavors. Wizard called to their assistance a sound engineer, by name John Stevens, to help in assembling the specific sound of the album. Stevens had worked with mainly punk bands prior to Wizard, and the savage sound quality of the release can be partially attributed to his tinkering. With that said, the band experimented with an ode to their other early influence - hardcore punk bands such as Black Flag - in the most glaringly unfamiliar deviation on the album, We The Dead. A dead-set, power-chord driven punk song featuring metalcore-calibre screamed vocals which Oborn has yet to display since.
I commend the Wizard's stance on including a full-on hardcore punk track on a doom album, but cannot say much else as, personally, I'm quite far removed from a punk fan.
Thoughts on the other derivative track, Night of the Shape - the same could be said as for We The Dead, commendable, but not of extraordinary merit. Being the horror film fan he is, Oborn composed a 'mysterious horror movie soundtrack song', and it is indeed a moody instrumental - with Mark Greening contributing his piano skills and a guest violinist called to complete the process of raising the hairs on your neck to a needle-point. Film-makers should do this track a service and include it on one of their projects, that's literally what it's made for.
Addressing the album's most significant number - Priestess of Mars. Apart from being the only song off the album to still, albeit rarely, be included on the bands modern set-list, Priestess of Mars is easily one of the Wizard's most excellent pieces of work. It is the best example of Let Us Prey's onslaught of chaotic doom - a classic Wizard track, a slow build up mounting to a loud, wah-wah blazed crescendo of droning, ambient riffage heavier than the insides of a star's core. It's also the track with clearest lyrics to understand - of the surreal eponymous priestess which is continually referenced in Wizard's later releases to the modern day.
Two words to package Let Us Prey in a nutshell - hypnotically evil. In honesty, I can only recommend this release to the listener of darkest, droning, sludgy doom and, of course, the extreme Electric Wizard fan. More streamlined fans, I feel, would be thrown off by Let Us Prey's deep, layered sound. It really is a one-of-a-kind album, in it's own genre as well as the Wizard's repertoire. The true magnitude of Let Us Prey must be felt by it growing on you in appreciation with each repeated listen. Critically, the notion of addressing the simple inaccessibility of the album to a 'wider' listener-base is simply laughable, as well as being leagues beyond the point.
The notion of criticism towards what some may call 'endlessly long, droning riffs', 'horrid vocals', and 'inaudible lyrics' is also well beside the point. This is Electric Wizard - a Doom Metal behemoth flexing it's heaviness-muscle and amplifying every aspect of it's sound to the absurdity degree before lashing out with the sonic force of a dark-star supernova hurled into your feeble human ear-drum.
Conclusively, a solid release overall, with the rare drops in quality, such in the form of Mother of Serpents - an honestly weak song which isn't even included on the album's original release tracklist - and the occasional moments of simple qualitative stagnation, such as Master of Alchemy, which I find oversteps it's boundary at times - after a while, the sheer density of the combined trio's ambiance is simply too much a harm to the ear in listening, there is justifiably a moment when the screeching feedback of Oborn's guitar and Greening's incessant gut-busting, ear-drum rending drum fills ceases to be a collected effort at songsmanship and just devolves into a directionless babble of an unfocused riffage which should've been ending entire minutes ago.
Let Us Prey signifies the disbanding of Electric Wizard's classic first incarnation. Two years later they would release We Live, a similarly experimental, though, to my opinion, a massively superior release, featuring Wizard's modern incarnation - Oborn and his girlfriend, Liz Buckingham, and friends.
A unique release by a band still, to this day, experimenting with it's sound and capabilities in versatility. For hardcore fans, recommended. For streamlined fans, I would point to the succeeding album, We Live, as a more favorable listen.
