Reviews list for Electric Wizard - Supercoven (1998)

While I really like some of Electric Wizard's post-2003 output, particularly the trio of We Live, Witchcult Today and Black Masses, where they really made their name was in the heady days of the Jus Osborne, Tim Bagshaw, Mark Greening three-piece's extended stoner jams. This EP was originally released in 1998 on Bad Trip as a limited edition 12" of 1000 copies. Jammed between Come My Fanatics and Dopethrone this goes even further down the stoned-out, trippier-than-thou road than even those mighty stoner classics, with only two tracks for it's 32 minutes this is throbbing and pulsingly hypnotic doom metal with enough chemical enhancement to anaesthetise an elephant.
Side A, Supercoven, relates a Lovecraftian tale of the summoning of ancient evils that is a slow build through layers of smoke-wreathed, plodding doom until the listener is forced to confront those malicious entities that have sat in wait through countless aeons and the song kicks up in pace and hits you with a tripped-out wall of sound. Strangely Jus Osborne's voice on this sounds like a cross between Kurt Cobain and John Lennon on Helter Skelter (so no drug connotations there, then!)
Side B, Burnout, is a pacier affair, it's doom taking on a distorted Hawkwind Space Ritual vibe (so, again, no drug connotations there either). As the lyrics intone, "imprisoned within my brain, dried and burnt out, chemical stained", Bagshaw and Greening keep pounding away and provide the huge sonic backdrop for Jus to just go ahead and do his thing, man, jamming like his life depended on it.
This is the satanic, drug-damaged bastard biker offspring of the 60s and 70's psychedelic movement come home to roost. There ain't no Nirvana to be reached here, this is stoner nihilism run riot and is where the real Electric Wizard stand up to be counted.