Electric Wizard

Tokyo Club Seata

A night for doom fiends and weed freaks.

Club Seata is a concrete box located beneath a car park in fashionable Musashino, West Tokyo. Tonight it’s playing host to West Country dopelords Electric Wizard, and it’s packed with the city’s doom fiends and weed freaks. It’s the kind of venue where sweat clings to the walls and you can still smoke in the bar. It’s also loud – really loud. Involuntary-bowel-movement loud.

Following deafening sets from masked Swedish death metal concoction Nox Vorago and doomy local heroes Church Of Misery, The Wizard get things rolling. The patter may be one-dimensional – there are complaints about the difficulties of buying grass in Japan, calls to legalise marijuana, and Dopethrone is introduced with the words “Here’s another song about taking drugs” – but the impact of these churning, malevolent riffs is extraordinary. Black Mass crunches along on the cusp of collapse, feedback shrieking between the chords, while See You In Hell

– the only track performed from the band’s recent Wizard Bloody Wizard album – seethes with hypnotic, perverse intent.

It all climaxes with a thundering Funeralopolis, with Jus Oborn shrieking incomprehensibly into the mic and guitarist Liz Buckingham carving out violent, apocalyptic riffs. Squalls of feedback fill the room and a sea of horns bid the departing musicians farewell. This was not a night for the faint-of-heart.