The album starts with a familiar element that hasn't been heard for a while; a sound clip from a film. Soon the feedbacking guitars start the sluggish, primitive and repetitive beat. As before the fuzzed out riffs are what Electric Wizard's heavy and dirty brew of stoner doom is about. The latter half of the album, after the psychadelic mind-fuck that "Destroy Those Who Love God", gets a bit different as things speed up a bit with more aggressive and guitar-driven songs. With his nasal voice Jus Oborn sings songs of praise to the dead and those practicing witchcraft, but the living and religeous he damns so it fits the apocalyptic music. Based on the description, one might think this is so heavy that Charles Atlas himself could not lift it were it a physical thing. There is one rule in stoner doom that Electric Wizard never forget, and that is the groove. Oborn and Liz Buckingham have, without a doubt through endless Tony Iommi worship, managed to tame the power of the riff and use that without hesitation on Time To Die.
The album is everything I hoped it to be. It's incredibly heavy, it's dirty, it's fucking groovy! Everything that characterizes good stoner doom and a good Wizard album is apparent. The power and the flow is simply amazing and the lyrics deal with the themes that the band is known for; misanthropy, occultism and other horrors. On Time To Die, Electric Wizard continues to evolve and experiment with their sound which is delivered to an album that should not leave any fan disappointed.
- Kristján Fenrir
Time to Die is Electric Wizard's eight full length album and marks a new beginning for the mighty Wizard, after leaving their long time former label Rise Above Records after 19 years, due to legal complications. Time to Die is released by their own label, Witchfinder Records through Spinefarm Records and is their first full length since 2010 and sees Mark Greening return on drums. Mark along with Jus Oborn and bassist Tim Bagshaw, founded Electric Wizard in 1993 and he played on what many call the band's magnum opus, Dopethrone (2000) before leaving the band due to tension between him and frontman, Jus Oborn. Greening however left the band again after finishing this album and was replaced by drummer Simon Poole.
On their last full length album Black Masses (2010) [Which made its way to HalCo's best of the year, and it said "Of course it’s going be fucking better than everything else you’ve ever heard."], the band took a different direction sound vice, while still maintaining their essence, the sound seemed less dirty, less heavy, dare I say even less Electric Wizardly than before. Therefore I’m glad to hear that the Wizard sound is back with Time to Die, the evil 'n' dirty fuzz guitar and Jus’s familiar nasal voice.
All of their past album have had a theme (according to Oborn) – revenge, drugs, black magick – and the theme of this one is death with song titles like: "Time to Die" and "Funeral of Your Mind." Oborn explains that to the band, death really means rebirth.
The albums opening track, "Incense for The Damned" starts with trickling water, eery organ music and a muffled sound clip, which if you listen closely is about the brutal murder of a young teen (Gary Lauwers) in 1984, by his friend, Ricky Kasso (Wikipedia) nick named "The Acid King" due to frequent drug use. The murder became sensational news because of alleged satanic ritualistic aspects of the murder and has influenced various artists, the most obvious being the stoner/doom metal band "Acid King". Throughout the album we have some more sound clips which unsurprisingly fit really well into the band's musical landscape.
Documentary on Ricky Kasso here:
The album doesn’t really get going until the third song, "I am Nothing," which has all the things you love about Wizard. Head slamming and memorable fuzzed out and heavy guitar riffs that you keep humming in your head long time afterwards along with a military marching drum beat and a magnificent soundscape reminiscent of Lovecraft.
I Am Nothing
I Mean Nothing
I See Nothing
I Feel Nothing….as I kill you
It slows down a bit with instrumental song "Destroy Those who Love God" but picks up the pace again with "Funeral of Your Mind" which is sure to get the crowd slamming heads rhythmically.
The rest of the album is classic Wizard, with "Lucifer’s Slaves" really going for the vintage Black Sabbath sound so much it starts to sound a bit like "Saturnalia Temple."
I have very mixed feelings towards this album, the first few times I listened to it I didn’t think much of it, but it really starts to grow on you. Curiously, their last two albums, Witchcult Today and Black Masses also had the same effect on me, it took me a really long time to appreciate them. Now I love them! But that’s also what I like about them; you sort of get something new every time you listen to them. I have to admit I’m a real sucker for the classic Hammond organ played by Greening on this album, gives the album just that extra occult and evil vibe and just leaves me wanting more.
This album isn't perfect by any means, but it's good and leaves you wanting more just like a good album should.
Favourite tracks: "I am Nothing," "Destroy Those who Love God," "Sadiowitch" and "Saturn Dethroned."
Now we just need to get them to play here in Iceland... [Spinefarm]
- Ívar A. Radmanesh
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