There is a murkiness to Dopethrone which stands as the very quintessence of the word HEAVY. Gloomy, harsh and gritty as hell, here Electric Wizard—self-proclaimed as “the heaviest band in the universe”—reaches what is perhaps the apex of stoner-metal, and certainly the band’s opus. The over-driven bass, down-tuned guitars and the general air of foreboding which looms over Dopethrone faithfully builds on the foundations laid by proto-metal riff-monsters like Black Sabbath (pre-Dio) and Deep Purple. Electric Wizard has always been about the attitude of ‘heavy’: deliberately-paced, apocalyptic tunes that sound as though they were produced by instruments sopping with sludge so fucking black that light itself cannot escape.From the album’s opening admonition that “Once you get into one of these groups, there’s only a couple ways you can get out: one is death, the other is mental institutions,” Dopethrone fastens you into barbed-wire straightjacket and sends you on a doom-bound journey through the realms of swords, sorcery, and assorted terrains of wonderfully bombastic wickedness. “Funeralopolis” is definitive heavy metal, with simple riffs building tremendously until they break under their own weight. The “Weird Tales” trilogy, clocking in at a formidable fifteen minutes, proves that extended instrumentation and maverick musical experimentation are not just the terrain of feel-goody jambands. The 2006 re-release may expurgate a solid ten minutes of the album’s title-track, but it does so in the interest of including the outstanding “Mind Transferal,” which showcases some of lead-guitarist Jus Osborn’s most fanatical playing committed to tape.
Verdict: 4.6/5 (classic, total classic)
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