May 3, 2012 by A.S. Van Dorston

I thought We Live was considered a dud at the time. Superfans beg to differ!

BLOODLUST, DRUGLUST: A Look Back at ELECTRIC WIZARD’S ‘WE LIVE’ & ‘WITCHCULT TODAY’ Albums …

I often enter well-established bands at some random point in their overall discography. I often meet the version that is either entirely refined, or in the process of being so, and generally trace my way backwards, go from polished, refined and matured to the polar opposite. Of course, there are exceptions to this. But, fortunately for me, I got into Electric Wizard at “Witchcult Today”, a phenomenal album by any standards, and started to work my way back. “We Live” is next.

However, first thing’s first, while Electric Wizard excels in doooooom and this album is no exception, “We Live” is actually an interesting study of how sludge can merge with/come out of the spirit and way of doom. Take the word “sluggish” as an onomatopoeic to get a feel for the album, and it is what it feels like. Fat, slimy, slow and dense masses of thick slabs slamming on the stone and dragging along a filthy, swampy, downright EVIL trail of sound and noise. The sound is filth-encrusted, unrefined, sick and hazy. Often, with the drums emphasizing the slamming of the chords, you feel like your mind is being pummeled by an assembly of occultist mine workers armed with sledgehammers. As such, “We Live” is a difficult album to sit through in one sitting, as it can get overwhelming to experience such beautifully nasty music for an hour straight; especially not since each song connects to one another through feedback and various noises and creates the illusion that this is a fifty-nine-minute-plus singular song. Continue…