Review Summary: Give up the fight, slid back into the night...
Black Sabbath's #1 fans struck back in 2004, after a period of inner tensions leading to the Wizard's temporary dissolution, with their pentatonic release, We Live!
Titled, as if in declaration, We Live! brought to fans the modern incarnation of the band - Justin Oborn and Liz Buckingham - a line-up reform which carries with it a tint of resentment from certain quads of the fanbase. The change in the Wizard's sound, marked by this release and continuing to the present day, came to forge the image which still holds ground to today's Wizard Bloody Wizard LP. The previous four albums prior to We Live! seem nigh-experimental in retrospect to the stylistic overhaul prevalent on every release since this one. Electric Wizard and Come My Fanatics are recorded in two completely different styles, going from a classic Cathedral-like sound to a vastly more defined, dark, spacey monolith of Drop-B riffage which strike the listener harder than the Chicxulub meteor struck the dinosaurs. Dopethrone emulated the previous album's sound far too much (and far too ineffectively, in my opinion), and is akin to a release by a different band when compared to it's succeeding Let Us Prey - a largely experimental release marred by periodic tensions within the band.
We Live! is immediately noticeable to be different from the previous release in that Oborn is accompanied with a rhythm guitarist, allowing for, yet again, a layered songwriting structure with potential to deepen even the one found on Let Us Prey's tracks.
Once the play-button is pressed, a significant note is taken at first listen to the vocals - the cryptically distorted, reverb-grilled wails of Dopethrone and Let Us Prey are cast aside completely, in favor of a clear-cut, largely clean vocal delivery from Oborn - who is noted in saying he simply 'doesn't like his vocals' and has them buried under everything else in the production. This is a surprising change, hearkening back to his performance on their first release, which I found quite suited the songs and overall sound of the band. Apparently, he decided to completely flip the inaudible vocals of the previous album and worked it up to have himself heard clearly. In honesty, I welcome and applaud this decision - Oborn is not, by any means, a singer, he simply takes the route of Megadeth's Dave Mustaine and maintains the instrumentals being far more important than the vocals. They simply suit the music and that is what they are there for (the production will take care of the rest).
I will state that, though this is a far superior specimen of Wizard's music than the previous (two) releases, it contains flaws which are also far more glaring as well. This is definitely an album akin to Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark - when the music hits home, it's an ear-gasmic, heaven-sent melody, but when it misses, serious stinker tracks come up as a result. Eko Eko Azarak is one such track - a shame, as it's the opener track. Opinions may differ, but I find this song stagnant within a single minute's listen, and often skip it entirely. The title track is the album's true opener, displaying entirely the album's new direction in sound and dynamic.
Apart from it's opener being it's weakest number, the length of the tracks is also something I would call to stand. No, I don't take to judging the song lengths of a Doom band, of all things, but an overstayed welcome is simply that. The human attention span is a bitch, and these song lengths rarely agree with it. For example, Another Perfect Day is an excellent song, easily one of their all-time best, but the long, repetitive middle-section bridge simply drones on needlessly, and I find myself wanting to fast forward to that well-deserved solo. I commend the song's commercial potential as well, if there were a Wizard song I would play to someone who isn't into Doom Metal, it would certainly be this one, I find a tint of catchiness to it which comes very welcomed.
In an oversimplification, that is We Live's only flaw - sometimes, the songs are stretched just too damn long, and it hurts the otherwise highly credible quality of Oborn's songwriting. But, Liv Buckingham is here - and she's a songwriter too.
"Some albums I write more of the riffs, sometimes he does. It generally evens out to about 50/50 overall, though it’s hard to separate it like that because we do almost all the songwriting together. Since we live together, it’s like a constant thing."
- Liz Buckingham, November 2nd 2017
While in my review taking on the previous Let Us Prey, I noted the closer track Priestess of Mars as the album's only commendable highlight, here I find the majority of the songs borderline masterpieces in the cursed name of Doom. Another Perfect Day, Flower of Evil, and We Live are well-tuned additions to their roster of maligned heaviness - the vocals are spot on, the guitar duality is noticeable and not simply there for naught, and the more melodic-leaning overall sound is hugely welcomed - being a fan that gobbled every second of Electric Wizard up as a blue whale ingests multiple tons of plankton in a single gulp under the waves. The 'classic' aspect to We Live's sound comes highly appreciated in difference to Let Us Prey's unending reverb-riffs and Dopethrone's marathon song length.
The Sun Has Turned to Black, in all honesty, is a track I find easily forgettable. Listening to it, I usually skip it, and when I don't - I find the song plays out like a Windhand song more than a Wizard song, which is not a bad thing but not a good one either. It's a solid track, one with a varied status among fans - some like it, some don't.
Akin to Let Us Prey, again we find a more deviant track with The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (which is also a movie, highly recommended) - a faster, thrashier, punkier song, not far removed from the previous We The Dead in style. Though, compared to We The Dead, there is barely any competition, this one easily takes the cake - catchier, more melodic, and the solo absolutely shreds.
And now we come to the unaddressed closer track, Saturn's Children. I'll go on to say, right off the bat, that I think this is the best song the Wizard has ever recorded - with Chrono.naut following closely behind. This isn't only an excellent doom song showing perfectly the vigour of the genre as a whole - it's a scale-tipping firequake which will have your head banging to it's meteoric might well after you've turned your music player off.
Everything good about We Live, as well as the band in general, can be heard by simply listening to this one song from beginning to end. With fifteen-minutes, an unprecedented length for them at the time, Saturn's Children gives the listener exactly two minutes and twenty-five seconds to get his skull ready for the anvil about to strike it with a sonic force of planetary proportions. At the six-minute mark, the main riff kicks in and remains unchanged until the end. Reverb-hung solos, which find themselves falling to the melodic side quite often, dot this song like stars on a night sky. The twin-guitar display is simply majestic, the chemistry between Oborn and Buckingham is explicitly shown here more than any other release. One drives the absolute monolith of a riff forward while the other strums neverending, wah-wah fixed guitar fills. The vocals soar across the Asteroid Belt in what I consider to be Oborn's finest delivery - lyric-wise, vocal-wise, production-wise - it's very well done and the theme of the song - the awakening of a cosmic behemoth to a chaotic cataclysm - is felt in every layer of every second of the song.
On the accompanying instruments, they are exactly just that - instruments, not new band-members. Wizard, from here on out, is a two-man show - everyone else is just a guest star. That is why I cannot say that the drums and bass are noteworthy. I am of the firm opinion that the bass-player's riffage is not mostly inaudible because of production, tone-deafness, or some reason or other - it is simply factual that the bass player, if left unheard, is inefficent, not helplessly subject to the tyranny of the sound engineer. The bass, for most of the album, is basically nonexistent, and I find this to be a fact attributed solely to Rob Al-Issa's wholly inaudible basslines. The same thing may be said, though to a far lesser extent, about Justin Greaves - his drums are just acceptable because of necessity, and that's the end of that - don't expect any stand-out drum fills or gut-busters like with Mark Greening, this guy is just here because of convenience.
With that said, I name Saturn's Children the absolute apex of the Wizard's songwriting skill. It's an unapologetically loud, thematically sound, well crafted, well versed epic of a song which will rock you harder than any hurricane (or Amadeus), until the bridge comes to an abrupt stop and you're treated to what is the only audible bass section on the album. It's emotional, it's deep, it's heavy, it's groovey, and Oborn's guitar glides in with what is possibly his best wah-wah cradled, reverb-soaked guitar solo ever. An orgasmic crescendo brings the end to We Live! (the forgettable Tutti i colori del buio is not counted).
Conclusively, We Live! is far more than a solid release, it's a statement - the band lives on, and there's much more where that came from. They would go on to release Witchcult Today three years later, arguably their most recognizable album and one which catapulted them to the heights of Doom Metal godhood. The band would come to define their new sound with the next three releases, exhibiting a well established, consistent style which the band still holds today. I can recommend this album to any listener of doom and Electric Wizard, even if only for the closing track - it's just that damn good. This is the album which saw the Wizard re-emerge from the grave and claim their place among Doom's Finest.
Ranking (from best to worst)
1. Saturn's Children
2. Another Perfect Day?
3. Flower of Evil
4. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
5. We Live!
6. The Sun has turned to Black
7. Eko Eko Azarak
8. Tutti i colori del buio
