The latest (2014) double LP repress of this classic monolith of British doom metal on vinyl...

Not surprisingly, you can pretty much trace the arc of Electric Wizard's long and sloooow descent into hellish satano-hippie debauchery just by checking out the album artwork for each of the reissues that Candlelight recently released here in the US. The band's eponymous debut was an extremely heavy, psychedelic offering that was still firmly rooted in the titanic crawl of Cathedral and Sabbath's long shadow. Jumping ahead to Dopethrone, the bong-sucking devil on the album's cover and it's charred palette of black and gold inks perfectly captures the smoking wreckage of the Wizard's ultimate orgy of stoned doom corrosion. In between the two we've got 1997's Come My Fanatics, and the first time I set eyes on this album (when it was originally released over here in the states as a double-disc set with the self-titled debut), I knew that there was going to be dark shit afoot. Set against a backdrop of Aurora Borealis-esque cosmic haze and a single black planet hanging in the sky, a group of seriously sinister looking dudes in cloaks are engaged in something clearly illicit and/or contributing to the downfall of humanity. Open up the album and your eyes are burned through with a diseased-looking tableaux of lava lamp ooze, and the booklet features assorted images of the members of Electric Wizard in varying stages of utter bakeage along with crude drawings of an acid-head Lucifer, a hookah-sucking chick with the Electric Wiz logo crawling outta her nethers...and that's not even getting to the total bad vibes and grindhouse visions of Come My Fanatics lyrics. The music matches the band's darker outlook, Jus Oborn's detuned guitar suddenly sounds way filthier than it did before, the songs are slower, it sounds like the light is being slowly sucked out of their music as each song progresses. There's more effects abuse too, hinting at the pitch-black psych that would fully blossom on Dopethrone..."Wizard In Black" and "Doom Mantia" especially send the Wiz's black tar riffs through a rippling veil of Hawkwind style warpage. Unquestionably essential for Electric Wizard disciples.