Electric Wizard Reveals New Album on the Horizon—And It’s Going to Be Bloody Heavy!
Electric Wizard’s highly anticipated new album is set to drop next year, and Jus Oborn promises it will be “bloody good—and bloody heavy.”
A reckoning, a culmination of decades spent perfecting their heavy, atmospheric sound of doom. Their recent ‘Black Magic Rituals & Perversions Vol. 1’ was a live offering, intense and writhing with their signature occult presence—a “gift,” as Jus half-joked, maybe even a “contractual obligation.” But beneath the self-deprecation lies the truth: Electric Wizard doesn’t just release records; they unleash soundtracks for the apocalypse.
“We have a new album coming next year. We are making sure it’s bloody good. And bloody heavy.”
This live recording was made at the height of the COVID lockdown—no audience, no plan, just raw Wizard on tape. During those isolated, surreal lockdown sessions, did it ever feel like you were channeling something out of a folk horror fever dream? Did the absence of an audience bring out something darker and more primal in the performance?
Jus Oborn: I dunno, it was kind of surreal at first. It felt heavy; some people were freaking out. But we felt we had to “document” where we were at, as we were supposed to be playing a lot of concerts that year. We’d just finished a tour of the East Coast of the US and then a big show in the UK, so we were psyched and ready to tour and record in 2020. We were fucking tight, y’know, and then boom… everything went to shit. So maybe we were in a dark place ’cos it did feel kinda apocalyptic. But I thought it would be a cool vibe for a “live” recording.
This record feels like discovering some lost, cursed artifact. What’s your relationship with analog recording? Does the hiss of tape or the crackle of vinyl feel like conjuring spirits compared to digital sterility?
We hoped it would sound like a lost demo from the early ’70s, like a proto-black-metal krautrock oddity… It sounds really fucking devastating, though.
The main thing with analog recording is magnetism, so yeah, if it’s in the room, it picks up the vibe, y’know? The waves are imprinted on the tape directly. I think you can “capture” a great performance to tape specifically because of the vibrations. It’s not just a “romantic” thing.
In fact, I am not a 100% audiophile maniac or anything. I mean, you can record on anything you want, really. Playing “live” is the main thing… there is an “electricity” between musicians when you really fucking jam. I hope that has been captured in this recording.
With titles like ‘Dopethrone’ and ‘Satanic Rites of Drugula,’ your tracklist feels tailor-made for a Hammer Horror double feature. If your music soundtracked one, what twisted tale would it tell? Who’s the villain, and what’s the curse?
It would have to be a Drugula flick first… he is a total renaissance anti-hero. His red eyes and lank, greasy hair, dragging innocent victims to his gruesome underground crypt.
Or a nasty exploitation movie based on Last House on the Left—the girls imagine they are picked up by their favorite evil rock band, Bloodlust, but they are kidnapped, abused, and buried in shallow graves near a picturesque graveyard…
Did being in the rural wilds during lockdown make you feel more connected to the earth’s darker undercurrents? Were there moments when you felt more like druids casting spells than musicians playing songs?
Well, I’ve always felt we were like druids casting spells, haha. It’s a very Dorset vibe, and we’ve always lived in the country anyway. It was just more medieval or something, as the outside world didn’t really encroach on anything. We couldn’t even hear the highway.
I started to embrace the whole “end of the world” vibe, really.
With themes of drugs, horror, and the occult in your music, how do you keep the balance between inspiration and descent into chaos?
Haha, a good question and maybe not an easy one to answer, ’cos sometimes the balance has spilled out of control a few times. But a little controlled chaos is good.
When you revisited tracks like ‘Witchcult Today’ or ‘Funeralopolis,’ did it take you back to the headspace you were in when they were first written?
Definitely with ‘Funeralopolis’ because of the lyrics… but we play them live anyway.
What gear helped you shape the sound for this recording? Any vintage pieces that played a key role?
It was all recorded on a Tascam 16-track, which is only a 14-track ’cos tracks 1 and 16 don’t work, haha. I’ve been especially obsessed with WEM gear. They are a British company from the 1960s—you’ve probably seen the amps used by Pink Floyd and Zeppelin. I have a mixer and the Copycat delays, which are awesome. Also, the amps, which are transistor, are really loud and gnarly sounding.
I also got some of the drum microphones that were used for ‘Live at Pompeii,’ which is my favorite “live” recording and a massive influence on this LP.
The rawness here feels heavier in a totally different way—how do you define “heavy”? Is it more about the sound or the feeling it creates? How do you measure heaviness: is it volume, atmosphere, or something more intangible?
The rawness was the speed (haha, not the drug). I wanted to set it up fast and not fuck about. Also, it all had to be one take—if we had to change or re-record anything, we would have failed. There are a couple of mistakes here and there, but they’re not really a big deal… I think on ‘Scorpio Curse,’ but the performance is so intense and evil. I think the mistakes made the song even more savage.
Yeah, heaviness is kinda intangible. Once I thought it was pure weight of sound, but then there are other elements to heavy, like darkness and, yeah, the atmosphere. I guess “doom” specifically is all about the atmosphere.
“It’s all about death and oblivion”
Back when you made ‘Dopethrone,’ you said it was about “death and oblivion.” Looking at the world now, does that feel prophetic—or just terrifying?
It’s all about death and oblivion… I dunno. The world always seems on the verge of being fucked, then somehow we pull it back, and then we find a new problem. I’ve seen at least one cycle of human behavior repeat itself. I think “history” or “fate” is more cellular in its evolution than linear or even retrospective. Things bubble up in similar patterns of growth but with different external factors.
Your music pulls listeners into its shadowy depths. Do you think they’re escaping something—or confronting it head-on?
Death OR oblivion? Confronting it or accepting the darkness that was always there. I don’t think it’s anything that pretentious really, haha. I think people tend to overthink what we mean, but in many ways, we planned it like that. We’re just stoned pied pipers, really… stealing your children ’cos you didn’t pay us for cleaning out all the rats and turning them into drug-addicted slaves.
In one of our previous interviews, you’ve mentioned wanting Electric Wizard to sound like the heaviest band of the ’60s. If this record was a lost artifact from that era, which producer or director would you want behind it? Joe Meek conducting séances in his apartment? Roger Corman setting your riffs to LSD-soaked visuals?… [Laughs]
Definitely Roger Corman. Anything by Roger Corman is fuckin’ legendary. I’d hope he’d create an LSD-soaked Poe epic for us. His Poe movies are such an inspiration for us—the title sequences alone, the music. House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Barbara Steele… aaah. Actually, when we met Chandler Thistle (director of Lucifer’s Satanic Daughter), we thought, “Here’s the next Roger Corman.” He had so much enthusiasm and the same glint in his eye.
If you could collaborate with a composer from a classic horror film—say, Ennio Morricone or Goblin—who would it be, and what would the end result sound like?
I’m really into the music from Mexican horror films. It has a strange mix of sinister orchestral music with primitive electronic noise… like Gustavo César Carrión. It’s really cool stuff. We would kinda freeform jam, howling feedback drenched in sepulchral reverb.
The Wizard’s legacy is already cemented, but if the band were to be remembered like a cult film—endless midnight screenings, obsessive fans, whispered recommendations—what would be the tagline for your “movie”?
I’d probably steal one from The Green Slime ’cos it has the best… like “Fighting for survival in the infected remains of a diseased universe.”
If you could summon any musician or band to jam with Electric Wizard for a night, who would it be? Personally, I’d go with early Blue Cheer. Can you imagine the kind of unholy sonic chaos you’d conjure up together?
It would have to be Jimi Hendrix ’cos he’s my absolute hero of all time. But fuck, I’d wanna jam with Blue Cheer. Actually, I used to email with Dickie Peterson a bit back in the early 2000s, but I hassled him constantly about letting me try out for Blue Cheer. In the end, he stopped writing to me, haha.
Okay, I gotta ask about the records. What have you been spinning these days?
Fuck, since the pandemic I went crazy rediscovering and digging new shit. These days, a lot of krautrock. I love Jeronimo, Birth Control, Asterix, Silberbart, Wind, Scorpions, etc.—well, mainly the heavy guitar stuff. I don’t really like the spacey hippy stuff, haha, except Amon Düül II. They are fucking evil and weird.
My tastes never run far from ’70s heavy metal, really, haha, with some black metal or ELP every now and again.
What’s next for you and the band—any upcoming rituals or chaos we should be ready for?
Well, we actually have a new album coming next year. Yes, this live LP was just an “offering,” a “gift” (maybe even a contractual obligation, haha) to you while you patiently await our new recordings. I can’t see us doing more than one LP ever again, so we are making sure it’s bloody good. And bloody heavy.
Klemen Breznikar
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