Metal Underground.com

The British purveyors of doom Electric Wizard return with "Black Masses," a brain-pummeling follow-up to 2007’s “Witchcult Today.” “Black Masses” marks the band’s first disc with its current lineup - founding vocalist/guitarist Jus Oborn, guitarist Liz Buckingham, drummer Shaun Rutter and new bassist Tas Danazoglou - and comes after years of turmoil that led to the defection of several original members. But the band picks right up where the 70's-inspired “Witchcult Today” left off with a hefty offering of stoner/doom/sludge that smacks like an anvil dropped from the top of a lighting rig.

The disc starts with the feedback-laden intro to the raucous “Black Mass” and finishes with the nearly nine minutes of distortion, feedback and otherworldly guitar manipulations that make up “Crypt of Drugula.” In between are six druggy, majestic musical nightmares that hearken the muscular, organic metal of Pentagram, Candlemass and High On Fire. “Patterns of Evil” is hypnotic, as “Meddle”-era Pink Floyd riffs collide with a woofer-rumbling bottom end and wailing guitars that sound like planes plummeting from the sky. It’s a tour-de-force with super-high crescendos that leaves even the listener exhausted, yet fulfilled with metal euphoria.

“Satyr IX,” a nearly 10-minute dark opus, is marked by Oborn’s anguished wails of, “Rise, rise, legions of hatred.” It’s vintage doom that evokes images of an apocalyptic orgy of witches, demons and stoned-out longhairs. “Turn Off Your Mind” is either an ode to LSD or a warning of the drug’s dark side, as Oborn chants “Acid burns your mind” over a psychedelic wall of distortion and feedback. It’s like the Beatles meet Cathedral. “Scorpio Curse,” meanwhile, is a haunting, bleak statement on universal atrocities – from rape to murder to the societal scourge of drugs – all set over a thunderous, mesmerizing chug.

Like most doom, Electric Wizard owes much to Black Sabbath and pay righteous homage to the genre’s pioneers. It would be hard to imagine that Geezer, Tony, Ozzy and Bill wouldn’t enjoy the imagery here, especially when Oborn bellows on “Scorpio Curse,” “Lucifer laughs this is his domain/Dead fill the streets up to the sky.”