siLLy puPPy
One of the many psychedelic doom metal bands to emerge in recent years, the awkwardly named WIZZERD with an E immediately fucks with my inner auto correct for spelling as i struggle to imagine why anyone would pervert such a cool world like “wizard.” OK, after a bit of a personal conundrum, i got over it and proceeded to check out this Kalispell, Montana band’s debut album DOOMCHILD which came out in 2016. I do like the double Z’s though!
Consisting of members Jhalen Salazar (guitar, vocals), James Ryan (guitar), Sam Moore (drums, percussion), Layne Matkovich (bass, vocals) and Wayne Randall (synthesizer), WIZZERD crafts an interesting slice of fuzzy heavy-psych tinged doom metal with stoner accouterments. In many ways this style of music which is fairly common these days sounds like the perfect blend of Black Sabbath inspired traditional doom metal with 70s Krautrock. While the album is mostly instrumental with extensive jamming and receptive chord progressions, they succeed in mesmerizing with the vocal tracks breaking the spell for select moments.
While many stoner doom bands are fixated on repetition with no resolution, WIZZERD succeeds in crafting a diverse soundscape that enshrouds the doom metal guitar heft with spaced out atmospheres, guitar build ups that include solos and a knack for breathing life into otherwise robotic plodding ad infinitum. The track “Desert” is particularly pleasing as it incorporates Middle Eastern musical scales into the plodding guitar chords and implants softer pastiches of clean guitar spender before the metal bombast is left of its leash and attacks in a monstrous raucousness.
There is definitely a retro 70s feel to DOOMCHILD whether it be the plodding Sabbath inspired guitar works or the bluesy hard rock lead guitars coupled with the grizzled hard rock vocals. Tracks like “Ocean” sound right out of the Sabbath playbook although the psychedelic atmospheric touches and extended jamming workouts keep it from feeling too much of a clone. The Krautrock accoutrements excel in bringing the less metal parts into a psychedelic milieu unlike any other doom metal oriented bands of this ilk. While not groundbreaking or in any way innovative, WIZZERD has nonetheless crafted a very enjoyable album’s worth of psychedelic stoner doom metal on its first offering DOOMCHILD.