Electric Wizard

Supercoven (Southern Lord)
by Brian Varney

There’ve been quite a few words written about this band in recent issues of this fine mag – granted, most, if not all of ’em, were written by yours truly, but that’s OK… Stupendous though I find the Electric Wizard, they’re definitely not for everyone. As Sam Kinison might’ve said about them, they’re family entertainment on another level.

What you’ve got here is a reissue of last year’s hard-to-find and already out-of-print Euro-only EP, remastered (since superlative sound quality is obviously why you listen to these guys) with two bonus tracks, which brings the running total to four songs, 50 minutes. If ever there was a band that deserved the title “doom rock,” Electric Wizard is it. “Electric Wizard use LSD, amphetamines, high grade marijuana, and various tablets exclusively because they want to forget” read the liner notes. Well, I’ve never done any of that, but this makes me want to forget, too. The creepy, glacial, two-chord grind of the title track’s thirteen minutes makes me want to stare into the sun until it burns a hole in my head. Slow and difficult though this may seem at first, it’s mysteriously compelling, and once it gets under your skin, it, much like the imaginary bugs no doubt crawling under the skin of the band members, doesn’t go away. Seriously, I don’t know whether these guys are idiots or geniuses, and frankly, I’m not sure I care. When you reach this level of musical profundity, the distinction between the two becomes meaningless, the body’s metabolism begins to shut down, and mere stupefication sets in. Oh, and let’s not forget the beautiful cover art, which looks exactly like it should, which is all I’ll say about it.
(www.mia-records.com)