Ahead of their appearance at Sonisphere this weekend, Electric Wizard have just revealed the title and artwork of their eagerly awaited new album ‘Time To Die’, which is due to be released later this year via Spinefarm Records.

In musical terms, ‘heavy’ means different things to different people. For some, it’s all about a well timed blastbeat, or the comforting heft of a distorted power chord, whilst others argue that even the most tender acoustic ballad can sound suitably heavy. For the Electric Wizard fan however, there’s only one musical force on this planet with enough of a physical presence to be accurately described as ‘heavy’…

The band’s self-titled ’95 debut was a solid, entirely respectable slice of wholesome doom goodness, but nothing could prepare the world for its colossal follow up, the planet shaking ‘Come My Fanatics’. Amazingly, the Wizard would deliver yet another undisputed classic just 3 years later with the mighty ‘Dopethrone’. Inspired by a potent combination of depression, dementia and enough class A drugs to fuel Britain’s free party scene until 2021, these records combined the weight and tragic ethos of traditional doom with the kind of lurid, white knuckled psychedelic seizures that have no doubt plagued Hawkind’s nightmares for years.

In many ways, a sizeable chunk of the doom scene is still reeling from the fallout of these records – one need only cast a wry eye at the parade of bell bottom clad no-hopers who’ve been irreparably damaged by prolonged exposure to ‘Funeralopolis’, doomed to wander the Earth in search of vintage amps and fuzz pedals in the vain hope that they too can somehow sound that heavy.

The Wizard, however, never really went away. Now, with Satan’s Satyrs mainman Clayton Burgess providing that glorious low end on the bass, the time is nigh for the Wizard to rise once more and reclaim their (Dope) throne as the heaviest band in the world. The band have inked a worldwide deal with Finland’s Spinefarm Records for their forthcoming LP, and we have a feeling it’s going to be something pretty special indeed…

Oborn had this to say about the new record:

“All of our albums in the past have had a theme – revenge, drugs, black magick – and the theme of this one is death. Of course, death to us really means rebirth, so this album is a manifestation of a very primal occult belief in the final sacrifice. We have gone full circle – it was inevitable, but we had to do it. We had to kill the band so we could be reborn. It was the only way to ensure we could come back even stronger.”

Electric Wizard will be playing the following shows in the coming months:

July 4th Sonisphere, Knebworth Park, UK (stage headline)

August 16th Jabberwocky, The Excel Centre, London, UK

September 12th Reverence Valada, Portugal (headline with Hawkwind)

October 10-12th Desertfest, Antwerp, Belgium

You can find Electric Wizard and Spinefarm Records on Facebook.