Electric Wizard doesn’t tour the U.S. that often, which turned the British doom-metal quartet’s appearance Tuesday at a sold-out Metro into something of an event for a certain highly specific clientele.
“Come fanatics, come to the Sabbath,” bellowed guitarist Jus Oborn by way of greeting on the opening “Witchcult Today.” “Thirteen dressed in black are here/Screaming, naked our altar/Kissed by the whip now Satan’s daughter.”
Yes, if sacrilege, Satan, guitar feedback, human sacrifice and copious amounts of weed are your thing, Electric Wizard is the band for you. They’re the most dedicated inheritors of Black Sabbath’s mix of heavy, low-end riffs and occult themes, the pioneers of what became known as doom metal, and their single-mindedness is brilliant to behold. If Ozzy Osbourne turned into something of a cartoon in recent decades, Electric Wizard is a reminder of a time when Ozzy and his bandmates really did seem like they were Beelzebub’s emissaries.
Electric Wizard’s name conflates the titles of two Sabbath songs – “Electric Funeral” and “The Wizard” – and its sound essentially elaborates on the first song on Black Sabbath’s first, self-titled album: Slow, massively reverberating riffs, tribal drums and deeply recessed vocals, as if emanating from a cave.
But Electric Wizard is hardly a tribute band. Their set would’ve made a splendid soundtrack for an execution – you half expected the band to be dragging around the stage like Death Row inmates sagging beneath the weight of their ankle and wrist chains.
Doom metal takes pride in its low guitar tunings, and Oborn’s guitar sounded positively subterranean. The sub-basement level tones created a swamp of overtones that suggested bells tolling and violins sawing.
Oborn had the look of a doom-metal lifer down cold. Denim vest? Check. Mutton chops? Check. Flared jeans? Check. Guitarist Liz Buckingham and bassist Clayton Burgess had the flared jeans, too, combined with appropriate masses of face-obscuring hair, the better to focus on just how violently they could thump those down-tuned strings. Drummer Simon Poole maintained strict discipline, keeping the tempos at a chug, and then bringing “Black Mass” to a grinding halt, as if the song had a blown tire.
“He wants to drink your blood!” Oborn warned at the start of “Satanic Rites of Drugula,” and then dropped the 10-ton riff that defines “Dopethrone,” which finally opened up space for Poole to play a few drum fills before the long, chaotic fade.
For all the talk about the dark side, amplified by the splatter B-movie scenes that served as a visual backdrop for the set, there was a message that dug a little deeper. The final section of the show was dominated by three long songs, particularly an epic version of the relatively recent “Time to Die.” It included a rare Oborn guitar solo that actually rose out of the murk with a shriek, before sinking back into the tarpits. The singer sounded an environmental warning, scolding earth’s inhabitants for so carelessly defiling their home. Their fate sealed, he delivered humanity’s sentence in the closing “Funerapolis,” a vision of nuclear annihilation.
“This Earth has died yet no one has seen!” he cried, a grim reaper with his scythe shaped like a guitar.
Electric Wizard set list Tuesday at Metro:
1 Witchcult Today
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2 Black Mass
3 Satanic Rites of Drugula
4 Dopethrone
5 Return Trip
6 Incense for the Damned
7 Time to Die
8 The Chosen Few
9 Funeralopolis