Black Masses
| Black Masses | ||||||||||
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| Studio album by Electric Wizard | ||||||||||
| Released | 1 November 2010 | |||||||||
| Recorded | May–August 2010 at Toe Rag Studios, London | |||||||||
| Genre | Doom metal, stoner metal | |||||||||
| Length | 59:09 | |||||||||
| Label | Rise Above | |||||||||
| Producer | Jus Oborn, Liam Watson | |||||||||
| Electric Wizard chronology | ||||||||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| About.com |   |
| Allmusic |  |
| Beatsperminute.com | 54% |
| Metal Forces | 8/10 |
| Onemetal.com | |
| Stereokiller.com | |
Black Masses is the seventh studio album by English doom metal band Electric Wizard. It is the band's only album with bassist Tas Danazoglou.
Jus Oborn described the album as a "continuation of Witchcult Today in many respects," although he also sees it as part of a lineage composed of Come My Fanatics..., Supercoven, Dopethrone, and Witchcult Today. However, he does draw a contrast between Black Masses and Witchcult Today in that he views the former as "violent, aggressive" and the latter as "mellow and alluring".
"Venus in Furs" is based on the book of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch; however, the song made references to the film of the same name by Jesús Franco. As Oborn notes, "Venus in Furs" is "about evil women. Every song on the album is a meditation on a different type of evil. When you say the term 'Venus in furs,' people get the image in their mind of a dominant female. So that's our 'evil woman' song. It's a classic doom theme."
When asked about the influence of drugs upon the album, Oborn concedes
it's a good part of my life to a certain degree, so it's hard to separate them. I think our sound is steeped in it to a certain degree, and improvisation is quite a lot based on drugs....You gotta be slightly telepathic and drugs can help that definitely. You can write brilliant music when you're not on drugs, but you don’t have that connection with other musicians, that telepathy. I think that's the important thing for a band, for the musicians.
This is their first album since Electric Wizard to not feature a song longer than 10 minutes in length, although the fifth track, "Satyr IX", is close to the mark, clocking in at 9:58.
David Schalek with About.com wrote that "Black Masses has the right amount of accessible, catchy stoner laden riffs to go along with the generally heavy assault of Electric Wizard's form of Black Sabbath-descended doom metal."
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Wikipedia