ELECTRIC WIZARD

For their eighth album, "Time to Die", British black-doom cultists ELECTRIC WIZARD bring drummer Mark Greening back to the studio, and apparently they fell into their own trance as this album clocks in at more than sixty-five grueling minutes. Fans will be mesmerized by ELECTRIC WIZARD's extensive tone drenching on "Time to Die", while others with less time to invest are strongly advised against it. "Time to Die" is a brutal, scalding affair that will rape your senses and defy your temperament.

The montage opening "Incense for the Damned" paints a horrific picture about satanic murders and black-metal music being blamed upon drug usage, setting the listener upon a ten-minute course of winding doom and stoner measures. Jus Osborn grates about the world being screwed up without the assistance of narcotics and weed, issuing a proposition that staying high actually curbs nihilistic inclinations. His suggestion about being a modern-day Caligula if left unchecked by a calming trip bears a twisted sense of rationality, and will assuredly become an anthem for those of the spliff patrol who can hack music this dark. The buzzing, up-and-down chords from Osborn, Liz Buckingham and session bassist Count Orlof soon turn the song's prolonged marathon into a screeching stupor while Osborn utters his mantra "We wanna get high before we die." Hardly new lyrical turf for these guys, of course, but there's a heated "yearning" for vindication seldom few can honestly relate to.

Only the chord structure changes as "Incense for the Damned" spills into the 7:49 drone-bombed title track. If anything, the key goes even lower as Court Orlof plants a vibrating floor for Liz Buckingham and Jus Osborn to peel off pulsating riffs, extended note tugs and ear-gauging wah. Mark Greening throws a ton of fills into what is essentially a death crawl of a song, and the offsetting mollification of the random organ splashes succumb to the overwhelming static ELECTRIC WIZARD sears them with.

The 11:31 "I am Nothing" dials things back even further with singular riff divots and frigid tones, setting a long, disturbing ostinato for Jus Osborn to call his "supercoven" to arms by his litany of demise. If you're a metal music veteran, this is easy to take as part and parcel to sounds so caustic, but caveat if you're a yeoman; : "I am Nothing" has the propensity to scare the living shit out of you. By the time Mark Greening breaks up the deadening monotony of the song with a plethora of tom rolls, the guitars increase in intensity, creating a deafening static miasma even the SONIC YOUTH troupe could applaud. Now that's scary.

More news, soundbytes from a 1984 "20/20" segment entitled "The Devil Worshippers" is given a subdued organ and guitar fugue on "Destroy Those Who Love God". Little else needs to be said, other than the chilling edict by a young Satanist that ends the daunting track leaves you scarred. At last, "Funeral of Your Mind" picks up the pace with a mid-tempo doom jam that keeps a stripped, menacing cadence that would've sounded perfectly at home in underground 1984. While the main melodies are BLACK SABBATH and SAINT VITUS-bred (ditto for "Lucifer's Slaves"),ELECTRIC WIZARD huffs a ton of squawking feedback and gallons of acidy guitar goo into the track.

Following those seven minutes of pummeling comes the excruciating drag of the 9:05 "We Love the Dead". Once more the chunky chords plow southwards and even Count Orlof hits some inexplicably dense tinges. The inherent harmony of "We Love the Dead" would actually serve a throwback horror flick well, but there's naturally something far more sinister at work within this dirge. It's only palatable to freaks of this stuff, no matter how awesome the guitar "picks" and shreds get within the final minutes.

"SadioWitch" and "Saturn Dethroned" cut the listener a break with much shorter running times and tighter, relatively faster lines. Nevertheless, when "Time to Die" is all said and done, the listener will feel shorn and naked like the ritual offering depicted inside the liner notes. Whether "Time to Die" is meant to expose the dank underbelly of Satanism or to mock outsider perceptions of it (the religion at its core is meant to celebrate to the nth self-empowerment and fulfillment versus gory sacrifice),ELECTRIC WIZARD issues a long-meted provocation that's only meant for a select few.