Electric Wizard called themselves “the heaviest band in the world” from the very beginning. More than thirty years later, they are.
Formed in Dorset in 1993 and led by Jus Oborn, Electric Wizard took doom and pushed it into a world entirely their own. Crushing volume, weed soaked psychedelia, endless riffs, occultism, horror, sex, sleaze and the damaged remains of 60s and 70s counterculture. Or, in Jus’s words: “Doom fucking occult heavy shit.”
Come My Fanatics... and Dopethrone established Electric Wizard as a force within the underground, but the band kept growing. Witchcult Today, Black Masses and Time To Die carried the Wizard into increasingly huge rooms and festival stages without changing what the band fundamentally was.
Hammer Horror, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, old porno mags, biker films, black magic, horror comics, weed smoke and battered vintage amplification all belong to the same world. Jus has spoken about drugs allowing the band to visualise music as images, and that blurred relationship between sound, film, sex, horror and psychedelia has existed from the beginning.
From underground rooms to the world’s biggest festivals, Electric Wizard have never gone respectable, never gone to rehab and never sold out.
Live, they remain raw, overwhelming and unpredictable. They are louder than almost anything else you will ever stand in front of. In an age of increasingly polished, controlled and manufactured music, Electric Wizard are the last great true heavy band left.
Their live album Black Magic Rituals & Perversions Vol. 1 captures exactly that. Recorded live to tape, without overdubs or digital correction.
“I always promised Electric Wizard was like rats in your face.” – Jus Oborn
Electric Wizard are represented worldwide by Mythology Agency.