Those inevitable three year gaps that Electric Wizard puts between albums are always a heavy burden, man. There are very few bands I crave mind, beard, and soul, and England’s preeminent merchants of DOOM are one of ‘em, so when that seemingly infinite wait finally comes to an end, it’s a crushing exaltation. Thus Black Masses, the band’s seventh, has been received, and it doesn’t waste any time ripping into your psyche with the hyper-fuzzed “Black Mass” and Venus in Furs” before slowing down on “The Nightchild” to feast on what’s left of your mangled being. The rest of the album continues on in this relentlessly ritualistic, utterly dope, serpentine fashion, all while Jus Oborn faithfully wails away from some mid-level purgatory wasteland while tortured souls claw at his throat. It’s a brutally weird and noisy ensemble at times, punctuated by the unusually acid-fried “Turn Off Your Mind” and the thematic interplay with 2007’s Witchcult Today, courtesy of the album’s longest, most menacing song, “Satyr IX” (see “Saturnine”), and the stormy, brooding, frenzied feedback of “Crypt of Drugula” (see “Satanic Rites of Drugula”). It feels awfully good to be in the deathly embrace of the Wizard riff once again.
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan Hawk
Vanguard Records
Yeah, okay, so the folksy, sultry tunes of Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan don’t exactly fall in with the rank and file of doom, metal, and stoner rock that you usually find around here, but the fact of the matter is — if you don’t know this already — Lanegan is a bad-ass, whiskey-voiced deity in the Broken Beard universe. The guy could put out a polka record and I’d still tell you about it because everything he touches (Screaming Trees, The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, etc.) turns to pure grit, which is what makes his collaborations with Isobel Campbell so great. She, former member of indie pop band Belle & Sebastian, is innocence incarnate, the Scottish girl-next-door with the porcelain voice, and he is the brooding American desperado at the end of the bar. Put ‘em together and you get an old suitcase full of black and white photographs, tear-stained love letters, faded memories, long distance calls from a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, and wordless nights on a porch swing. Hawk, their third album together, is a whole barn full o’ jukebox flare, rustling up a roving range of country-folk, blues, soul, gospel, and Americana, calling to mind the eras and auras of Cash and Carter, Dylan and Baez. Campell’s songwriting on Hawk is utterly moving, playing emotion better than any instrument on the album, and is at once light, languid, deep, and desolate. To help the mood along, the album also offers a few Townes Van Zandt covers and a couple of appearances by Willy Mason. But, as always, this is the Campbell and Lanegan show, which continues to be the strangest, most beautiful show on earth.
Check out the video for “You Won’t Le Me Down Again” from Hawk!
Electric Wizard
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan