Electric Wizard and their Dopethrone

Tony Britvec
Nov 7 · 3 min read

Sometimes, it’s more about how you say something than what you say. Sometimes, you say things like, “Legalize drugs and murder” and it very much is about what you say. The metal genre has long been a refuge for artists to challenge social norms and question the status quo. Very few groups do this in grander style than the Lovecraft loving, occult obsessed, doom metal band; Electric Wizard. The band formed in Dorset, England in 1993 and has been turning out music from Ozzy Osbourne’s wet dreams ever since. The Osbourne reference is not due to coincidence and Jus Oborn, Electric Wizard’s lead singer, admitted the band’s name is a combination of two Black Sabbath songs; “Electric Funeral” and “The Wizard”. Even the cover art Electric Wizard chose for their single, “Legalize Drugs and Murder” is a blatant ripoff of Black Sabbath’s “Master of Reality” but might better be characterized as a tongue-in-cheek joke at Sabbath’s expense rather than an attempt to steal from them.

Electric Wizard’s first commercial success came from their self-titled debut album in 1995 but it wasn’t until the 1997 release of “Come my Fanatics” that the band developed the “Stoner Metal” sound traditionally associated with the group. In the year of our enemy 2000, Electric Wizard released their magnum opus, titled “Dopethrone”, and sent shockwaves through the minds of impressionable young children everywhere. In response to the continual hatred shown by parents and the media, the band cut audio from a 20/20 interview in which two adults discuss taking action if their child is being negatively influenced by heavy metal music by becoming depressed and joining satanic cults onto the back end of Dopethrone.

The band ran into a multitude of personal problems post-commercial success with Jus Oborn opening up in a 2009 Kerrang! Interview with Nick Ruskell to say, “At the time, we were pretty bad people. I got arrested for arson of a car, outside a police station. Tim [Bagshaw] went to nick a crucifix off a church roof so we could use it onstage, then slipped, fell off through the window and sliced his arm open. He got community service for that. Then Mark [Greening] got nicked for robbing an offie. He smashed the window, nicked a bottle of whiskey, then sat there drinking it outside! We weren’t very nice people, to be honest. We were feeding off that shit at the time. It made us feel like we were more of a heavy metal band.” (https://tinyurl.com/yywn35to)

For all the jokes and the debauchery, Electric Wizard has cultivated a sound that people describe as, “The heaviest band in the universe”. Their music is like a wall of noise reverberating through your torso as they deliver lyrics that beg for contemplation,

“Death shroud existence, slave for a pittance

Condemned to die before I could breathe

Millions are screaming, the dead are still living

This Earth has died yet no one has seen” (Funeralopolis)

If you’re new to the genre or an old-head just reviewing favorites Electric Wizard deserves a seat on their dopethrone and in your playlists. With a rotating set of members for live performances, you may think their quality has slipped, but you’d be wrong. With their last album coming out in 2017 and their last concert being, probably, yesterday in some part of the world the band is as hardcore as always and fully deserving of your time. I can’t recommend them any higher and if you want a new band obsession they’ll surely be the ones to deliver it.

Tony Britvec

Afghan War Vet, Writer, and Dog Lover

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