Monday 18 April 2011

Electric Wizard – Black Masses (Review)



Do it. Kick over the plasma, the LCD and unplug the blu-ray. Pull out the internet and let the cell phone battery run dry. Go there. Become electricity, phase and crackle with the static buzzing on the cathode. Feed from warmth behind. Electrify and magnify. Commit to tape, then leave ghosts, bleed through the layers until even the tape is gone. And when the colour fades, washes out into greys, almost whites and almost blacks, you will have arrived. The reverberations of Elvis for the first time, the walls of reverb of the sixties, the blur between discrete events, the flow and the performance. Go to that place.

Black Masses is a continuation and arguably a perfection of the Electric Wizard project to date. Finally, the riffs are equally tempered by what was always present yet never fully realized: a full serve of up front psychedelia and horror movie ambience. More than pastiche or tribute, Black Masses is an effortless evocation a lost occult ritual record from the 1960s.

Black Masses is available now on vinyl on both sides of the Atlantic (Rise Above and Relapse) on various distribution deals. It will probably set you back more than you think it is worth and yet buy it now before you have to pay $100 plus in a years time.

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