Produced by Liam Watson
Released: 2007
Few bands do stoner doom as impressively as Electric Wizard, and on Witchcult Today the band has more or less dispensed with some of the experimental angles they were taking and returned to the roots of the their sound. Not a group to do anything by halves, this time they have truly gone to the source: analog recording gear, valve-driven 70s amps and just bucket-bong loads of occultism. Even retro-sound producer Liam Watson was brought in to ensure that Witchcult Today would sound like it was recorded in 1971 and not 2007.
In that regard then Witchcult Today is a complete triumph. The guitars are simply massive, fuzzed-out beasts lumbering languidly through a heavy haze of pot-smoke and Jus Oborn's atonal, almost tuneless warble is 1970s psychedelia personified. The title cut gets things underway in a typically Wizard fashion with an enormous riff that lingers like a really good bong-hit and cheesy Hammer House-style lyrics about devil worship (and pot, of course). "Dunwich" heavies things up considerably and adds a bit fat groove that actually makes them sound like Cathedral; "Torquemada 71" has that strange hippy-sounding quality also in spit of the fact it's about torture.
The problem with this album is that it's just really not that interesting. Listening to it under the influence of a cloud of dope or some kind of acid would most likely be a freaky trip, but without that stimulation Witchcult Today just plods along without going anywhere. There's only so much you can do with stoner doom, and most of it has already been done. Oborn's vocals are quite weak and the riffs are slow and immense but that's really about it. "Satanic Rites of Drugula" (about a drug-addicted vampire) has possibly the most memorable motif and is both amusing and pretty cool and "Dunwich" is definitely a stand-out, but the most noteworthy track is the droning ambient horror film soundtrack "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions" although even this is ruined by a self-indulgent 11-minute playing time.
Witchcult Today is undoubtedly how an album of this nature should sound, but it really doesn't need to be this uninspired.
- Witchcult Today
- Dunwich
- Satanic Rites of Drugula
- Raptus
- The Chosen Few
- Torquemada 71
- Black Magic Rituals & Pervesions: i) Frisson des Vampires ii) Zora
- Saturnine
Rating: 48%
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