Electric Wizard-Witchcult Today re-issue

2007/2012
Metal Blade/Rise Above

This album  originally came out in 2007 but now it's getting the re-issue treatment from Metal Blade and Rise Above. This was their sixth album and was recorded on vintage 1970's equipment. This wasn't as much a departure in style as it was more of a stripped down approach to some extent. The couple of albums before this had seen some experimentation and plenty changes in tone. The two albums before this definitely had more layers of fuzz added on.Witchcult Today in many ways saw the band getting back to their doom roots to some extent and we definitely got to hear more of Jus Oborn's vocals and they were mostly clean. The themes are much the same as on their previous work, which means witchcraft, drugs, horror literature and British horror films. We do "Black Magic rituals and diversions" which is a lengthy mixture of spoken word excerpts and occasional drum thumping. Raptus is a brief venture into spaced out sounds and "Saturnine" is a long more involved voyage to another planet. However we also get the title track, "Dunwich" and "Satanic Rites of Drugula" which are perhaps some of the most traditional doom that the Wizard have done. Of course that's all relative because this band has always been about being extreme in terms of heaviness and sludge. I like this album as much now as I did when I first heard it in the fall of 2007. It lacks some of the oddness of their previous releases but it shows this band could really focus in deliver some massive waves of pure doom. Instead of just merely sitting a smoke-filled haze this time around they stepped up and really hammered out some straight out, deep down metal that reminded us that this band can still play.