Everything Stoner Doom has been striving to be. - Dopethrone should be held high as the pinnacle of stoner-doom. It s one of those albums that many,many bands will try to surpass and come no where close to the actual thing. Now, I know there s some critics of Electric Wizard and stoner doom in general that say that these guys are nothing more than Sabbath rip-offs. Well, I personally think it shouldn t matter. These guys are taking a style that has been done before and adding their own touch to it, so who cares if Electric Wizard sounds like Sabbath, as long as you can tell the difference between Electric Wizard, Black Sabbath, Bongzilla, Yob, Weedeater etc. it doesn t matter. With this album, Electric Wizard have taken stoner-metal and given it a much,much heavier tone than most bands of the genre are willing to do. Everything sounds like it s being run through fuzz distortion, even the vocals. Actually, I d like to address the production on this record. In this world, there are tons and tons of albums that suffer from muddy, raw, unpolished production and never realize their full potential because of it. I am happy to say that Dopethrone is one of those few albums where gritty,dirty production is actually a plus, rather than taking away from the experience. The bass frequencies are put up in the mix, causing your speakers to rumble and shake in terror. At loud volumes you can feel the bass pulse through the room. The guitars are sludgy and distorted and extremely fuzzed out and create kind of a cloudy feeling, making the rest of the band sound like they re pushing through the fog (which was probably intended, based on the album cover). Occasionally the guitar will be run through some kind of effect,like delays and flangers, to give the album a psychedelic quality. The drums seem a little buried, but again it helps retain it s foggy feel. The vocals are distorted, which makes the lyrics hard to understand, and again they re given less attention than the bass and guitar, making it sound like a man buried and calling for help. The album runs together almost as one piece, with few breaks in between, giving the whole procession an oppressive feel. The songs are all groovy, longrunning jams, with instrumental parts,improvisation, and samples all figuring into the equation. There also is quite a bit of repetition and occasional tension building throughout most of the tracks, giving it a pleasing hypnotic feel. All in all the tracks are of consistent quality and rarely let up, and when it does, it s always to build up into another pot-fuelled riff session. Again, this album is pretty much everything Stoner Metal should be. If you re a black sabbath fan there s definitely something here for you or if you re first getting into stoner metal you ll do yourself a great favor by picking this up. If you re a huge doom and/or stoner metal fan you should probably have this by now. For fans of Eyehategod,Down, Weedeater, Goatsnake etc.
WEEEEEE! - Holy bleedin Batman is this heavy! Now, to give you a frame of reference I m still of the impression that Meshuggah s Chaosphere is quite possibly the most brain-bustingness album ever created... it actually hurts in that oh-so-good way that only Meshuggah can deliver. However, for sheer low-end crush, no one outdoes Dopethrone. All hail the King of gut punch and raw subsonic power!
sooooo....hhhhheeeeeeeaaaaaavvvvvyyyyyyyyyy - Mother of god...this is it, dudes. In this newly popular again (oddly enough) style of music that has been tagged doom sludge or stoner metal by countless desperate-to-be-cool hipsters, it seems that, as a band, you have to go either one of two ways: the groove-based Sabbath-and-acid worship of bands like Sleep, Kyuss, Witchcraft and the like, or the ultra-low-and-slow funeral doom or drone groups like SunnO))), Burning Witch, Melvins or any number of bands that sound like they shot up a molasses-and-smack concoction straight to their veins. Electric Wizard defies this distinction with their masterpiece, Dopethrone, perfecting a combination of mind-warping Iommi-worship riffs and downtuned heaviness that is simply jawdropping. I will say this: played on OK-to-crappy speakers, there is something lost that really requires a good stereo or set of headphones to get through, weak speakers just can t handle the ultra-low sonic frequencies produced. Things start off with the incredibly short (by Electric Wizard standards, that is) Vinum Sabbathi. Actually a pretty decent song, but only a taste of what s to come. After it wraps up, the ensuing feedback segues right into the epic behemoth of a song that is Funeralopolis, whose drawn out intro is accentuated by the sound of a gurgling bong in the background, and may very well be the most Sabbathian moment on the album, save for the quick jam The Hills Have Eyes. However, once the floodgates open and the band unleashes with full brain-melting force, you will be left with little recourse aside from letting your mouth hang open in dumb awe until the album finishes with the mammoth musical apocalypse that is the title track. Dopethrone is easily the best entry into the Wizard catalog so far. The first, self-titled album is little more than Cathedral and Sabbath homage, although done very well, it s their most fun album, if that word applies. Come My Fanatics took things up (or should I say down?) a few thousand notches, and is a vile sludge masterpiece to this day, Return Trip must be heard to be believed. But Dopethrone is something special. The clean production might put some off, but I think it is needed to truly convey the universe-collapsing heaviness that only Electric Wizard can pull off. As far as the doom (whatever that has come to mean) genre goes, this stands as one of the all-time classics, standing atop the metal mountain alongside Sleep s Dopesmoker, Saint Vitus Born Too Late, and the first four Sabbath albums, sonically, it exceeds all in pure low-frequency fuzz-drenched heaviness. If you are a newcomer to the stoner metal thing--modified hipster who just heard Mastodon last week and traded in his skin-tight Poison The Well shirt for a slightly-more-comfortable High On Fire one, I m lookin at you, bub--get your hands on this monolith and let class begin. This is as real as it gets.
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone (Music Cartel) - Whoa! Great doom metal by this British power trio. Saw the band on this actual tour. Cuts here I found myself playing several times to obtain even more brain damaging effects were Vinum Sabbathi, the fifteen-minute, four-part epic Weird Tales / Electric Frost / Golgotha / Altar Of Melektaus, Barbarian and the closing, twenty-minute title track Dopethrone. Notice the music on this CD might not be so hard, loud or even fast but nonetheless, it s extremely H-E-A-V-Y! Highly recommended, if you dig this genre.
This album will crush your skull! - If you dig heavy music, this is a must have for your collection. This is low end doom heavy, like Sabbath on acid x 10. This is a really, really great listen, super psychadelic and trippy, crazy, creepy, heavy doom riffs from some planet light years away where the creatures evolved from shroom spores and spiked leather collars. And to top it off, this cacophony of doomcore is a power trio of burnouts from England. Top notch, if you dig the heavy, cop this album immediately if not sooner.