Tuesday 8 September 2009

Electric Wizard - The Scala 07/09/09

The Scala was absolutely crammed for this show, a solid mass of black t-shirts, beards and hair. Leccy Wizard have clearly picked up a lot of new fans since they resuscitated themdelfs in recent times, and deservedly so for theirs is a distinct sound, truly heavy, truly metal, smattered with basic fuck the world/worship the occult vocals and seventies guitar solos. But this distinction can act against them. They seem to have a template for writing tracks which they rarely deviate from and when they do stray too far from it the songs are noticeably weaker and fail to retain the essence of the band's sound, becoming less like a generic Electric Wizard track and more like a generic heavy metal track. It's a catch they've apparently failed to find a workaround for. They seem to be a band who've already written their perfect track in tonight's closer, Funeralopolis, and everything else is either a slightly weaker version of that or an unsuccessful attempt at something else.

Still, there's no denying that the band is heavy, and yeah maybe they are limited in range but fuck me they're good at what they do within that and they do it with conviction. There's no irony in Jus Oborn's sleeveless denim jacket's patches, and when he sticks his middle finger up at God before shredding he really means it, and I can feel it, and I can nod my head to it for an hour quite happily.

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