Electric Wizard - Black Masses (2010)

Listening to Black Masses is like listening to something while under the influence of high grade heroin . It's there , it's cool , whatever , but you've got shit on you're mind and under you're current state aint NOTHIN' gonna derail your one way trip into the land of nod . Not even The Wizard . And that's pretty sad really as even on their weaker albums The Wizard still have (had) the ability to command ones attention with little effort involved. Now comes Black Masses and it really bums me out to feel like The Wizard just may have run out of magic tricks to captivate their audience with. I take that back. I do realize that there's a large percentage of people on their dick lately as Doom, stoner doom in particular seems to be the flavor of the month. Being almost abnormally obsessed with doom in its many forms for well over 20 years, it's kind of a double edged sword, all the newfound interest in it. It's cool because, hey, any decent musical style deserves an audience and its acceptance but the downside is that with every new trend comes the inevitable overdose.

The bummer about Black Masses is that it's just kinda there. Nothing climbs outta the speakers and grabs you by the throat in order to repeatedly bash your fucking head into the wall leaving you dumbfucked. There is no dropping to your knees to worship at the black altar this time around. The whole thing is a rather ho hum affair that brings to mind the nap after playtime commonly referred to as Let us Prey.

All of the aforementioned bitching does not mean that the album is beyond redemption, hardly. There are some decent riffs strewn about and for those who truly give a fuck, or think they do, the production is a step down from the last album, meaning, it achieves the blackened and drug induced atmosphere as was the intention of the band. The tempos range from the more upbeat, almost cheery, hop along feeling of Wizard chestnuts such as Dunwich and Wizard in Black crawling back down to the more commonplace snail's pace the band are known for, though nothing on this album carries with it the colossal weight of We Live or Dopethrone which is the part that bothers me the most. There comes a time, I've noticed, in a bands career when the need to throw ones weight around and act like a total fucking maniac is replaced with a need to obtain accessibility seemingly brought on by maturity though it is extremely rare that you find a band that learns to fuse the two elements into a two headed beast of colossal proportions. Instead, one usually ends up canceling out the other.

At the end of the day, Black Masses is far from being a terrible album. It is more an affair of weak limbs that puts the band in danger of becoming swallowed whole amidst the sea of clones born of the elder monstrosities put fourth by the earlier incarnation of The Wizard .