Electric Wizard have announced that they have a new book coming out later this year. Come My Fanatics: A Journey Into The World Of Electric Wizard will be released on June 22 via White Rabbit. It has been written by Dan Franklin and follows on from his debut book Heavy: How Metal Changes the Way We See the World, which was published in 2020.
The book will cover the band's full journey, from their inception back in 1993, through their genre-defining records Come My Fanatics... and Dopethrone and up to the modern day, most recently their 2017 record Wizard Bloody Wizard. It's a deep look inside of the workings of one of the universe's heaviest bands, with "extensive interviews with the band and anyone else they deem worthy to speak to their legacy."
Dan Franklin had this to say on the opportunity to write such a story: “The existence of Electric Wizard is a thrilling aberration in the British musical landscape. For their fanatics, this book goes deeper into their world than anyone has ventured before. For the uninitiated, it reveals the abominable excesses of the Wizard. Once you get into this group, you can’t get out. I’m particularly happy to be spreading the bad vibes of Come My Fanatics with White Rabbit, who are unhealthily committed to unearthing the forbidden treasures of our culture.”
And here's the full synopsis if your appetite wasn't already whetted:
"In 1993, in the market town of Wimborne Minster in Dorset, England, the heaviest band in the world was born. Led by guitarist and singer Jus Oborn, Electric Wizard began as an untameable power trio.
They inhaled the iniquity of their lives and vomited it out in colossal waves of doom metal, synthesising the forbidding local landscape, biker culture, video-nasties, black magic rituals and titanic doses of psychedelics. In 1997 they released their revolutionary second album, Come My Fanatics… Then, after triumphant and calamitous tours of the USA and following the release of arguably the heaviest rock album ever recorded, 2000’s Dopethrone, Electric Wizard all but imploded, destroyed by the very reality they were fighting against.
However, when guitarist Liz Buckingham joined Oborn on guitar for We Live, they drew a magic circle around themselves in a new line-up that went on to explore deeper occult horrors on modern doom classic Witchcult Today onwards.
- “It had a 13-minute spoken-word black mass on the B-side”: The mysterious late 60s album that Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt says invented Satanic rock
- “I was eating tons and tons of painkillers. It was as hard to kick as heroin. It was really, really bad”: How High On Fire’s Matt Pike pulled back from the edge of darkness to make De Vermis Mysteriis
Come My Fanatics is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the subculture the band has absorbed and, in turn, created. From seventies exploitation cinema, through the writers of Weird Tales magazine and a panoply of the marginal and downright sinister, to the band’s own live ceremonial happenings – this is Electric Wizard’s world. We’re just dying in it."
The latest music from the band came out in late 2021 in the form of L.S.D. (Lucifers Satanic Daughter), song recorded especially for the film Lucifers Satanic Daughter.
Here it is in all of its dizzying glory:
