Out of print for a while there, the Wiz's legendary Dopethrone is once again back in stock...

In honor of Electric Wizard's recent induction into the Decibel Magazine "Hall Of Fame", whioch was awarded to their milestone album Dopethrone from 2000, we've got all of their crucial deluxe re-issues available through Crucial Blast for you doomhounds that are missing these mighty platters from yer library. Repackaged in sweet digipack cases with enhanced and expanded artwork, brand new liner notes, great photos captured during each album's respective era, and bonus tracks, these Electric Wizard reissues are essential for any real fan of dope-huffing, spine crushing British DOOM.

Like a lot of people, Dopethrone was the album that started it all for me. I can't even remember where I first picked up my copy of Dopethrone, but I do remember that it wasn't because I had already heard the band - nope, it was because of the fucking awesome cover art of Lucifer ripping tubes. That kind of experience just doesn't happen enough these days, you know? I'm talking about when you can pick up an album before hearing mp3s or streams of the music, picking it up purely based on how badass it looks and then just getting blown the fuck away because the music is even more killer than the cover. That's what happened when I tossed this into my stereo for the first time - I had just recently been going through a serious Sabbath / doom kick (which seemed to be the spirit of the time, looking back), and was already thirsting for some really gnarly riffage, but I was thoroughly unprepared for how zonked Electric Wizard were going to sound. The "Reefer Madness" style sample and scuzzy bassline that starts off album opener "Vinum Sabbathi" had me hooked from the first, and when Jus Oborn's distorted megaphone vocals and monstrously detuned guitar kicked in alongside Mark Greening's loose, pummeling drumming, man, I knew that this album was going to be magic. The flow of Dopethrone is perfect too, as the album grinds through the massive skull crush singalong of "Funeralopolis", the epic three-part psych scum freakout of "Weird Tales", "I, Witchfinder", and the title track, the trip gets darker and heavier and more fucked up, the riffs taking on a progressively heavier coating of grime and slime, the lyrics, satanic hippie imagery, pulp fantasy literature and 70's splatter/horror flix references becoming more arcane and trippy. "Rise...black amps will tear the sky...feedback will free your mind and set you free." FUCK YEAH. The band's previous albums were heavy as hell, sure, but for Dopethrone, it sounded like someone took Electric Wizard and dunked them in a vat of cooling tar, then releasing them to crawl through the heaviest, most blown-out Sabbath riffage possible. One of the heaviest doom metal albums of all time. Hell, one of the heaviest albums of all time. Essential. Wizard freaks need this for no other reason than it contains the 15 minute long track "Mind Transferral" which was previously only available on the Japanese import.