Year Of Metal #001: Electric Wizard - Dopethrone

I am not and never have been a metal guy. While there are some softer or sillier examples of the form I can get on board with, the genre at large I have always filed under “not for me”, from the music itself to the fashion, haircuts, and larger milieu. Metal people are, in my experience, usually among the nicest on Earth (save for the odd church burner) but all the same I’ve wanted no part of it. Until now. 

I have designated 2024 my year of metal. Starting at the cl`osest I can find to an agreed upon Year Zero for metal (1970, when the first Sabbath album came out - miss me with all that “The Kinks are metal” gear), I have picked two albums per year from then until 2023; I’ll then use a trusty random number generator to work my way through an abridged history of the heavy stuff. 

As luck would have it, first out the gates is a record I’ve heard before (I believe 98 of the 108 are new to me): Dopethrone by Electric Wizard. A legendary doom metal release from 2000, it’s as close to my comfort zone as I get in metal. Within reason, I can get on board with the sludgy sounds of this lot, Sleep, and The Melvins. It’s properly heavy, monolithic rock that implores you to climb inside. On the surface it’s not doing anything complicated, but it has that ambient quality to it. For all that it’s thudding and demanding of serious volume, it’s music you can focus to.

  I admire the truth in advertising of an album called Dopethrone. Then-members Jus Oborn, Tim Bagshaw, and Mark Greening attack the album with the locked in concentration that speaks of true weedheadedness. I’m tickled particularly by “Weird Tales”, ostensibly a three part suite but in practice basically the same pounding riff for 15 minutes, occasionally slowing down or speeding up. That’s not a dig (though it’s decidedly not for everyone) but the album has at times that sitcom vibe of a now-straight stoner reappraising some work that seemed genius in a cloud of smoke but is actually unhinged. 

The pure overwhelming heaviness of the majority of the album makes the moments in which they try something different all the more distinctive. “Funeralopolis” is downright hooky, relatively speaking, with a riff that goes from lumbering to galloping over the course of eight minutes. My favourite is “I, The Witchfinder”, one of several songs tapping into horror movie motifs. It’s Electric Wizard at their most dynamically varied, building from a spooky, wobbly, almost spare opening all the way to a wall of effects-laden guitars that sound like a flock of buzzards picking at the bones of the blown up song. 

It’s hard to tell if the record sounds like amazing fun or an incredible physical chore to actually make. The production techniques are simple - everything is impossibly loud, everyone’s fighting to get a word in edgewise. No doubt Oborn wrote lyrics for the record, but at best you can pick him up caterwauling into the overwhelming void. It works to brilliant effect, Phil Spector’s wall of sound taken to its logical conclusion and then some. When a distinct element manages to blast through the mix, like the high lines of “We Hate You” or bellowed chorus(?) of the title track, it’s like you’ve found something shiny and cool in a pile of slurry.

You couldn’t sustain yourself on this kind of stuff all the time, you’d go insane. But for a rewarding, overwhelming experience that genuinely attacks the senses, Dopethrone is a winner.