Back in stock...

Back in print, now in a slightly different package and pressed on heavyweight 180 gram black vinyl, with a (amazing looking) full color insert.

Ok, so as much as I miss the brilliantly dysfunctional lineup that produced their all-time classic Dopethrone, Electric Wizard V.2 is still pretty badass. 2007's Witchcult Today features the post-Dopethrone lineup of guitarist Liz Buckingham (formerly of Sour Vein and 13), bassist Rob Al-Issa and drummer Shaun Rutter backing the delirious dope-fueled deep-space visions of frontman/guitarist Jus Osborn, the band's only remaining original member. With the new lineup, the band has also moved into a looser, more freely psychedelic direction, no longer drowning in the pitch-black tarpit nightmare that surrounded their early albums and stretching out into realms of Hawkwind-style spaciness, though things are still plenty dark and pummeling in Electric Wizard's world. The plodding, Sabbathian narco-doom is still there, but there's more in the way of zoned-out psych guitar freakouts and drifting Hammond organs and an all-around laid back vibe that inhabits the eight songs on Witchcult Today. The title track that opens the disc jams out a single mammoth bottom-end riff lumbering through fields of fuzz, launching into a wailing effects-laden psych-guitar freakout at the end, and "Dunwich" unleashes a ridiculously catchy riff and chorus that'll glue itself to the inside of your head for a week. The hilariously titled "Satanic Rites Of Drugula" goes for a slower, slimier blackened doom jam, while the following "Raptus" is an almost Ash Ra like psych-noise interlude. Another massively catchy riff appears in "The Chosen Few" and has loads of great space-rock effects that build in intensity towards the end of the song, followed by "Torquemada '71"'s sleazy slow-motion boogie. Their weirdest track on Witchcult is the eleven minute "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions", which starts off with plodding instrumental doom and Hawkwindy effects, but later evolves into a freeform percussion/drone jam with backwards samples and druggy ambience permeating the entire second half of the track. The last song "Saturnine" is another eleven minute epic, but it returns to the groovy Sabbathy sludge with massive hypnotic riffing and some of Jus's most impassioned vocals on the album. Drugged out and totally crushing, fans of the 'Wiz need this just like everything else the band has released - recommended!