BLACK MASSES!!!

Fuck me! Have you heard the new Electric Wizard? It's is easily the best thing the Wizard has put out since Dopethrone. Hell, it may even be better. (I'm not gonna say it but I might be thinking it.) It's certainly not as face-crushingly brutal as Dopethrone but what it lacks in hardness, it makes up for in heaviness. We're talking serious smoke-infused grooves, baby. We're talking about grooves that make you wanna fuck a virgin on a pagan altar. Sexy.

Black Masses starts of with the title track which was a good call cuz it's one of the best songs on the album. It's a bit faster than usual but the riffs are still beefy as fuck and the vocals are almost catchy if you can believe that. I don't want to get into a long and boring song-by-song synopsis but I do want to mention that the song "Turn Off Your Mind" is fucking killer. Jus Oborn's vocals are reeeeeally good on this one. They're particularly good on the whole album, actually. But seriously, this track makes me feel like I got dosed and stepped onto the set of a 70's occultsploitation flick.

The thing that makes Black Masses better than a lot of EW's other albums (and most albums by other bands in the genre, for that matter) is that these wizards have really figured out how to keep their riffs interesting. Doom/stoner/etc. is about riffs and repetition but let's face it, a lot of it can get rather boring after a while. The trick is to change the way you play that same riff over and over again so that it doesn't sound the same. And EW have really nailed it this time around. Most of their songs don't have more than two riffs but they add enough other shit in there (wah-wahed-the-fuck-out solos, chanting, and is that a synthesizer I hear in the background?) to keep your attention for six (plus) minutes.

My only complaint is the last track, "Crypt of Drugula." It's a pretty half-assed noise drone that goes on forfuckingever but doesn't go anywhere but whatever, it's the last track so I can just turn it off and put on another album.

This album is being release on vinyl on December 21. The cheapest place I've found to pre-order it is here. If you don't give a rat's ass about vinyl you can pick it up right now at your local music store.