Black Magic Rituals & Perversions Vol. 1

For a soundtrack to the end of the world, there is no band better than Electric Wizard. As the COVID pandemic took hold in 2020 and lockdown restricted movement to your immediate surrounds, the legendary British doom outfit wondered if they might ever play live again. Out in the wilds of the English Westcountry where singer/guitarist Jus Oborn and guitarist Liz Buckingham live, the band descended into their crypt-like jam space to make a live album like no other. With no audience, and no actual plan to release what they came out with, they recorded themselves into a 16-track tape machine to capture their essence, their malevolence, their heaviness. “We’d been gigging for two years at that point, around America three times, going to Japan and Australia, and we were sounding pretty good by the end of it,” says Jus. “When the pandemic happened, we thought, ‘Fuck it, maybe we’ll never play again.’ So we went into the jam room and played the songs to get them on tape to capture how we were playing at the time.” The final product, Black Magic Rituals and Perversions Vol. 1 is as raw and heavy as one would expect from The Wizard.