After what seems like 20,000 years, it's been three years and the Electric Wizard put out a new album...Witchcult Today! (never mind the fac tit's been all over the internet for free download for a month.)
Come fanatics, come to the sabbath
Thirten dressed in black are here
Screaming, naked our altar
Killed by the whip now, Satan's daughter
Quite frankly, the band's changed a bit since '04, after Greaves left the band. The new drummer they've found is decent but not the most memorable. Plus they got the White Striped producer to put his mark on the album. Needless to say, it's given the massive unearthly sound of the wizard an analog-heavy feel, which makes this band sound more 70s than ever. So this time they sound like a bunch of fanatical worshippers playing their music to an unearthly being and getting massively high.
And speaking of the 70s, the band's love for occult and obscure stuff from that era shows here harder than ever, with plenty of evil imagery and weed-worshipping lyricism inspired by Lovecraft and others, as sung by Oborn, who sounds completely morbid and in the middle of a dark ritual. He almost resembles Danzig without the Elvis influence, if that can be envisioned without drugs.
Torquemada '71, I am the Inquisition
Torquemada '71, From your sweet lips, confession
Torquemada '71, My Countess Bathory
Toquemada '71, you'll never torture me, yeah!
And a dark ritual it is...But what about the sound? The music? The atmosphere to add to the voice? s**t, it's still as great as ever, with more riffage than you could have ever hoped for! Still downtuned, still loud, and they made a more proper use of two guitarists! The band sounds closest to a normal band as ever (With straight-up riffage and pace, chorus, and soloing above the rhythm colussus they call the other instruments), but still superior to just about anything else out there.
Hail covens this is it, A thousand amps toil the end time riff
The sky a coffin lid, all condemned beneath it's shadow
The chosen few, the chosen knew, spilled out in the stars, his prophecy
Raise your fists, now you exist, the bell of doom striked the 13th hour!
Eight songs, and each one of them easily up there with the classics from the good ol' days of Come My Fanatics and Dopethrone...From the haunting opener of the title track to the disturbingly catchy "Dunwich" to 70s-esque songs like "Satanic Rites of Dragula" (Which is an awesome song about a vampire that gets high off sucking blood), "Torquemada '71", and "Black Magic Rituals and Perversions" to the absolutely cathartic closer "Saturnine", this may be the best album they've ever released. This is saying a LOT considering this is the same band that concocted ******** DOPETHRONE.
Your dope-laced blood shows me new highs
bloodlust, druglust, Count Dragula arise..
It's hard to say what's the best songs here, because all of them kick a**, but I love "Witchcult Today", "The Chosen Few", and "Saturnine" the most for sure. Plus "BMRaP" ends abruptly which is a total ********. Really, the only flaw this album manages to achieve is the album art and packaging. In Europe they put this album on ******** Playstation one cds and the 2LP is 60 DOLLARS USD, which puts them on a Boris level of stupid. But overall, this album is definitely the best they've done and one of the most mammoth things I've heard this year.
twisted The Witchcult is Today, and The Witchcult is ******** DOOM! twisted
10/10
