Review: Wizard Master ‘Ablanathanalba’
Rome has been bringing lots to the round table as of late with uprising labels such as Heavy Psych Sounds, and the mental bandmates from L’Ira del Baccano. It’s as if the local psyche ward has let them all loose at once. Heavier than the tundra and catchier than any wildfire, Wizard Master won’t go unaccounted for during the recent epidemic.
They came soaring into the scene like a one-hitter looking to do some wonders, but fate may have it they are sticking around like the resin they managed to build up in four years. They’re a natural disaster that masterminded their own separate sub-genre of funeral doom in four rehearsals flat with their second track, Funeral Boogie. It loosens like lug nuts and then tightens back up with each drowning, wailing crash at the slowest BPM on earth.
Italy’s capital is compounded by molten lava ashes of men buried on top of men. Rome has a lot to bellow out sorrow about if you think about it. Modern-day Roman soldier descendants of yesteryear are now dressed in tattered vests with Saint Vitus patches and come wielding fenders for swords and Orange cabinets as shields. Southern Mediterranean warlords with beards now rebuilt of glory and pure fury of the remnants still left of a fallen empire.
Aside from the fact that everyone could stand to give this band a hard way to go about the band name, they are adamant about performing electrifying doom metal while possibly singing through a cauldron over the extent of their full-length that’s released on Electric Valley Records. This is rather fitting for the Roman threesome that come dressed in their ‘Sabbath Sunday’ best.
drags on the ground like bell bottoms…
Master Of Wizardry doesn’t take an apprentice to push play on, but it enhances the higher self-consciousness by the time the real deal begins three minutes into the song. Ablanathanalba isn’t a tongue-twister, it’s voodoo or ‘voodoom’ as a matter of fact. It’s as haunted as the streets of Rome. It can test you and press you to rise from nowhere at any given time. The last track, Tested By Death, drags on the ground like bell bottoms. The two founders, Mano Sinistra and Mano Destra made a pact and are sticking to their wolf tracks.
It’s not the kind of impending blues doom that you want to be played at your funeral, but just remember none of us are making it out alive from here. This album is a grave reminder that life is a simulation of events. If times seem darker than they truly are, it may be time to put on our shades to reflect the nuke bombs and re-imagine how it could get a lot worse in the same vein.
It’s better to be standing by listening to doom, rather than become it. Doom can be used to overcome travesty by remaining in the polarity and not dissolving into thin air with either too much or too many false origins. Ablanathanalba doesn’t take too many riffs at once but needs a boost just as many times to go up, as it does to stay down while revolving around the historical (doomy) background.
Label: Electric Valley Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Spring ‘The Strutter’ Chase
