Rank The Albums: Electric Wizard

I already talked about how much I love Electric Wizard in my Top 10 Doom Metal Bands post, and with nine full lengths under their belt I thought they would be the perfect band to begin my Rank The Albums series with. 

I'll be ranking all of Electric Wizard's albums from nine to one, and expanding a bit on why I placed them. I won't be including any of their EPs or splits here, just the LPs. I'll be trying to give a little objectivity to this ranking too, but for the most part this will be my personal taste. So here we go...

9. Electric Wizard

In retrospect, Electric Wizard's self-titled debut sits slightly apart from the rest of their discography. The band had yet to really discover the sound that would take them away from other bands of the era and propel their brand of Doom into new, as yet undiscovered horizons of heaviness. At the time the record was considered to be up there on the heaviness scale, and certainly it has it's moments: the chugging riffs on 'Black Butterfly' and the final leg of 'Behemoth' are impressive. But the band would go on to make these sound practically tame in comparison with the albums after this. Still Electric Wizard is a nice listen, and it's interesting to see just how far the band moved with their next album.

8. Wizard Bloody Wizard

It's a shame that Electric Wizard's latest record is, in my opinion, their least satisfying. The band went for a simplified and raw approach to the record, but unfortunately to my ears it fell short of the standards of their previous work. Mostly I felt this in the songs themselves which didn't really grab me as much as previous efforts. I do appreciate the band changing their style though and making something they really enjoy whether fans will like it or not. No great art is made by compromising for the sake of an audience. Wizard Bloody Wizard isn't a bad record at all, but it just doesn't have quite the same richly dense atmosphere and well-crafted songs as their previous works.

7. Let Us Prey

Electric Wizard's final album with their original line-up was, by their own admission, an attempt to experiment with their sound. In a way they do this, and the record has some intriguing moments which lead down a darker path than they had previously trodden. My feeling with this record though is that it doesn't quite match Dopethrone for riffs - there isn't as many infectiously good hooks, and the songs don't quite have the same captivating flow to them. That said, 'The Outsider' is probably up there in my favourite Electric Wizard tracks, and this record should not to be discarded by any means.

6. Witchcult Today

Witchcult Today was the first time Electric Wizard entered Toerag Studios, the famous reel-to-reel analogue specialist studio in Hackney, East London. For a band as heavy as Electric Wizard to sound great on analogue tape would take some impressive feats of engineering, and they did achieve it... just not on this effort. The album in no way sounds bad, but in comparison to the sound they would get on their later visits to Toerag, it doesn't quite have the power and dynamism. Even in the song-writing and composition 'Witchcult Today', retrospectively, feels more like a warm-up for their next record. There are some excellent moments though; Satanic Rights of Drugula being the particular highlight, and the atmospheric Black Magic Rituals & Perversions is an interesting tangent.

5. Time To Die

Time To Die is Electric Wizard's longest album, clocking in at over an hour, but surprisingly there is not much extraneous material on this record. There are some long tracks on this album, but never do they overstay their welcome. In fact lengthy songs like I Am Nothing and We Love The Dead are fully engaging to the end. Time To Die doesn't see Electric Wizard completely experiment with their sound, but with the opener Incense For The Damned and the closing couplet of Lucifer's Slaves and Saturn Dethroned, they are pushing the boundaries of their sound in a way that works beautifully. It's a great record and never disappointing to listen to.

4. We Live

Electric Wizard's first album with Liz Buckingham, the start of the the band's second era so to speak, is a markedly different affair from any of their records before. The vocals are at their most melodic in places, and the band's emphasis on purely producing the slowest, heaviest and sickest doom possible was replaced with a higher fixation on song-writing. When 'Come My Fanatics...' came out, did anyone think the same band would produce a song as grungy and energetic as 'Another Perfect Day?'. It's an excellent record that keeps the grim tonality the band had developed and moves direction towards a more complex style with less focus on the riffs in isolation but in context. This album set the path for a new Electric Wizard, but more than that is a brilliant record in it's own right.

3. Come My Fanatics...

I was in my first year at university, aged 20 that I heard Come My Fanatics... for the first time, and my brain was introduced to a new level of heavy metal I had not comprehended before. I had heard Earth and Sunn 0))) already, but that felt abstract and ambient to me. Electric Wizard felt energetic, visceral and absolutely vital.

I had recently started delving further into extreme metal, and specifically Doom Metal. I was in the process of wheeling my way through the classics; Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Born Too Late, Forest of Equilibrim - I had enjoyed them all, but Electric Wizard I had yet to touch. I couldn't decide which of their records to go with first. Black Masses was their newest release, and Dopethrone had that classic cover; but for some reason Come My Fanatics... with it's creepy title and the dark druids on the cover caught my attention the most. Those opening moments of Return Trip with the almost inaudibly low bass tempted me to push the volume up, and when I did so that guitar riff came in with a force I hadn't yet experienced. It continued throughout the album, and it blew my mind. I was in love, and it was the start of not just my adoration of Electric Wizard's music, but a discovery of so many other heavy bands like them.

In hindsight Come My Fanatics... is pretty raw, and is bested by some of Electric Wizard's other works. That initial point of mind blowing heaviness though, something which I know a lot of people also felt when they first head that record, is a moment I won't forget. I still enjoy putting this record on when I need a dose of pure, unadulterated, unyielding heavy Doom.

2. Dopethrone

I put Dopethrone at number two, but that isn't a reflection on the quality and influence of this record, because Dopethrone changed the game. I might not have been even aware of Doom metal when this record came out twenty years ago, but from what I have read and what people who were around the scene then have told me, this album was groundbreaking even in comparison to Come My Fanatics....

Dopethrone is remarkable in so many ways; the way the dingey and smokey atmosphere envelops your mind, the way the groove and flow of the riffs is so perfect that is refuses to give any release, and the way the sickness and darkness is conjured up in a haze of pure fuzzy brutality. This record is totally on it's own, few things have come close to it even now, and that opening riff from Funeralopolis might be one of the greatest of all time. Two decades later it is still Electric Wizard's most celebrated work. It continues to be one of the most influential records in Doom metal today, and without it Doom metal would not be the same.

1. Black Masses

I went back and listened to all of these albums when writing this list wondering whether my opinion would change, but it hasn't. Black Masses is still my favourite Electric Wizard album. I love this record so much because it has the perfect equilibrium of Electric Wizard's style, and is their most brilliantly crafted and most intricately layered record. Black Masses was their second recording at Toerag studios, and this time the sound is quite incredible. It's so unfathomably dense it's almost subterranean, yet expansive and huge in scope. You have to turn it up loud, as with most analogue recordings, to get the best sound, and when you do this record reveals so much depth.

Songs like Venus in Furs, Turn Off Your Mind, and the truly incredible Scorpio Curse have so many hidden details and subtleties, I find that I can listen to this record over and over and find something new on each listen. I don't think this record is considered as highly in Electric Wizard's discography as it should be, and I could go on for days with superlatives describing how much I revere this album. Instead I will simply urge anyone who hasn't considered this record to be as good as other Electric Wizard records to re-listen to it, turn it up as loud as you can bare, and enjoy the utter brilliance of this album.

So there we have it, thanks for reading and please feel free to comment below and tell me your opinions on Electric Wizard's discography.