#10 - Ryan & Steve

Electric Wizard

Dopethrone

2000

Easily the heaviest, most weed-drenched record I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. I'll always think of this record as the go to for the late night parties at our college place on Brattleboro. During these parties Mike was always the one pushing to hear this monolith again and again - I must publicly thank him for this. My only qualm is that now after this record, most other doom and stoner metal comes across as flaccid and weak. This is the beast.

"When you get into one of these groups, there's only a couple of ways you can get out - one is death and the other is mental institutions." Kickin' it off right with "Vinum Sabbathi" we're immediately drenched in Sabbath-fueled riffage and some of the most pleasingly heavy guitar tones in modern metal. The dense sounds here are overwhelming, seemingly too big to digest. Most of the stuff here is the plodding slow dirge of nightmares, sounding like the shifting of tectonic plates and a billowing bong hit. The record gets finished off with the ten-minute opus, the title track "Dopethrone". Incomprehensible lyrics get slurred and barked while being buried alive under the riffs. No records come close to this and if you're a fan of sludgy metal or even just Black Sabbath, you owe it to yourself to spin this unrelenting behemoth. -S.R.

If you aren’t completely rocking out to this album within its first two minutes you may need to check your pulse, for you might be dying. Dopethrone is a startlingly brilliant achievement that kidnaps you and brings you into Electric’s Wizard drugged-out, trippy world. I would not recommend listening to this album while on any illegal substances, though I’m sure about 90% of Electric Wizard’s fans would strongly disagree with me. At 70 minutes, my only criticism would be that its length is a bit too long for music THIS intense! - Phil