The Heart and Soul of Funeralopolis

It's mad to think that people still make music after the year 2000, as though it didn't peak as an art form with Electric Wizard's magnum opus Dopethrone. It's mad to think that Electric Wizard even still make music after 2000 for that matter. Yet, on they go and so our witchcult grows. Had they packed it in we'd never have got the Lovecraftian Witchcult Today or the colossally heavy Black Mass. They are simply laughing at us at this point, as if to say we came, we saw, we conquered and no one's come anywhere near close to reaching those heavy heights again but us and only when we feel like it. Living proof that unlike The Beatles or Spinal Tap that you can bring your wife in, let her kindly set on an amp, lose all the original members and still advance your sound. They are indisputably the greatest and by far the heaviest sound to emerge from our pathetic planet.

You heard it, they're the best and they always will be. Not just the kings of doom or stoner, no that would be thinking too small, but of everything in this universe. You'll find pieces of every genre and medium currently existing smoothly in their work and that's what makes it so damn good. The genius is the way they bend all that lies before them in to their own particular sound time and time again without fail. The dubbed up dance of Ivixor B/Phase Inducer. The punky grunge of Weird Tales. The creepy Carpenteresque church organs of Night of the Shape. All twisted to this cosmic narrative of a dying planet brought about by our own despicable behaviours. It's hard to put in to words what the band mean to me, they are the beating heart and soul of this critical cesspit that lies before you. Exactly why when it came to choosing the name of this monthly magazine opting for Funeralopolis was the easiest choice ever made. Sounding both journalistic and apocalyptic. Everything this magazine is unapologetically about.

So rare is it to see and hear that which expresses everything you want to express. To the point you wouldn't even think to ever make music because they make it exactly the way you want it. As the overly quoted face of edgy nihilism Tyler Durden once said, "I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable and most importantly I'm free in all the ways that you are not". What could Jacob Kelly possibly ever add to the playing field that the Wizard already haven't? Well knowing me there'd be a few more sections incorporating electronics and leaning in to Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. But I'm an idiot and would only fuck it up so no chance I'd be picking up a guitar and synth any time soon. No interest at all. I'm a fucking film guy anyway. However, I bow to my musical kings who occupy the Dopethrone

Being a man of cinema, I've always been attracted to music that I can see. If it doesn't have a visual appeal it isn't for me. About a casual head bop and sneaky toe tap is the most you will get from me. It's a story that lulls me in to the music. This is where most local bands bore me. They make the mistake of thinking I came to be wowed by their incredible musicianship. I didn't rock up to the boozer for technical virtuosity. Who cares if you strum your strings like it's a vagina? There's plenty of people who can play out there. If that's where your heads at, be a fucking session guitarist or something for it’s the best you'll ever reach. I came for the vision. Everything else is secondary. It doesn't matter if you can hit notes or play complex chords. As Joe Strummer said, "I don't like music, at all. Music isn't the point". He's right music isn't the point, music is the means. I want to see the album cover, hear the music and be transported. Location, location, location. There has to be a location. If I don't come out thinking I need I need to up the old reading list and see about a million more movies then it has failed. Everything else is background noise. 3

In my life, I'm lucky to say I have encountered 3 groups that I really gave a shit about at every level from the manufacture to release. Namely, The WuTang Clan, The Nine Inch Nails and The Wizard. Going back to the beginning, my first love was the Wu. As a young boy, I was raised on a steady diet of Bruce Lee movies. Cheesy sound effects and endless fist fights made up my world. Therefore to see RZA applying that to his own working class world was wonderful to me. New York transforming itself in to Shaolin Island and getting lost in this man's vision running counter to Nas's strict cinema verité realism (which has it's place too). Above all RZA's a man with vision. Goes down as a legend for bringing 9 gangsters in a studio to record his silly kung fu nonsense. How he did it, we'll never know but we shall be forever grateful.

My second love was the Nin. There's a point when everyone comes to realise and accepts there's some really pathetic teenage angsty lyricism there. Even Trent would agree, which is probably why he seems to be distancing himself from the band as much as possible these days. I'll be a fan of the Nin 'til I die because in truth I never really cared for the lyrics anyway, I was more enamoured by their cinematic soundscapes. Hence, why Trent and Atticus are killing it in the film industry now and have Oscars to their name. 2 things here though as to why my interest has slightly dipped over the years. Fincher has fully realised their sound as the score to the digital age. It had to be done and he was the one to do it. It's done. Be arsed copying? Also, they've expanded their musical knowledge now to include all sorts of belting stuff like jazz making them serious guns for hire. Even Disney are ramming Pinocchio's lying wooden nose up their arses. There'd be nothing interesting about using Nine Inch Nails music for cinema these days, as it has already become music for cinema. Their marriage to kino is so established that all your getting is sloppy seconds.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future is The Wizard. I present my third and current musical obsession that has only grown over the last decade. Initially, I came across these guys in university around the time the underrated Wizard Bloody Wizard was flooding on to the unapproving streets back in 2017. In a bizarre coincidence, I was formerly well acquainted with someone who's lecturer was Simon Poole down at Falmouth University. How he matches up with the usual demand for a drummer in Electric Wizard I'll never know. By all accounts, he was pretty chilled rather than the usual manic bastard who could barely crash his kit in time. On multiple occasions, I asked this former acquaintance of mine to hook me up so I could meet my hero and fellow Jess Franco fan, the bands mainstay, Jus Oborn, but she never would.

Anyway, putting that utter disappointment to one side, university is a place where even more so than attending 9am lectures and handing in assignments, you first start meeting people from all different backgrounds. Meaning you're exposed to all different kinds of music. Regular go-to's synthpop and post-punk had been worn to death. Instead of goths, the metal heads begun slipping in, affecting my tastes, forcing me to listen to that stuff and bending me in all new directions. They came armed with their best. The thrash big 4 and all that 80s yer da metal like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden that was fucking silly. Alright riffs being violated by theatrical singing nutcases like Rob Halford. I didn't understand it. The only way I could enjoy it was ironically and laugh at it but it meant nothing to me, however much I tried to embrace it. Eventually, I'd come around and appreciate it (especially Metallica) but it still doesn't mean much in truth other than mild historical recognition. Humorously primitive perhaps today but worthy of their place like Grandmaster Flash or Sugar Hill Gang are to Hip Hop.

One metal band would eventually change all that. It wasn't long until Black Sabbath got recommended. Considering I'd only really heard Paranoid as a kid, I was intrigued by what these Brummie fellas had to offer. Of course, Black Sabbath are just objectively the greatest so I was like yeah, whatever this is, I want more of this. Wait you can actually play this slow? You're allowed to do that? You can keep that fast playing show offy shit, serve them slow and thick please, bar tender. And for a long time that was the motto. At least until I heard black and death metal. So I delve around doom alleys and funeral playgrounds, taking a liking to Sleep, Fu Manchu and Boris. Great bands by the way. But Electric Wizard? Those guys hit me like a freight train.

They were everything I wanted The Cramps to be in my earlier gothic departures. Around the same time, randomly I had a course on my film degree that was covering soft porn trashy auteurs like Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger. I exploded on that and just became a full time porn head. Godard's all well good and but I'd done all that shit back in school. I didn't need to know any more. Auteur theory flowed through my veins. This drug addled student of cinema needed the rough lo-fi like the isolated need shoegaze and these exploitationers knew how to deal it out. Ended up doing my dissertation on exploitation, which looking back was more an excuse to investigate the subject further and unravel its true meaning. So, to hear Electric Wizard talking about the same directors was a total blessing. The two jus' went hand in hand. Perfect timing. Opportune. I went on the psychedelic trip through them both and this journey knows no ends. Extremity gives way to further extremity. I am not satisfied 'til I've seen, heard and felt it all. We've seen the other world and now we cannot stop. Not even Dom Cobb and his nifty Inception tricks can bring us back to reality. On we go until breaking point. Beyond the safety blanket of sanity. Unable to stop for the only fear greater than continuing through this filth is stopping. Anything less than everything is simply nothing.

Biker gangs. Give them to me. Sadomasochist freaks. Give them to me. Devil worshippers. Give them to me. Barbarian warriors. Give them to me. I want them all. All the thrills and I want them now. Unlike the majority of people, I found a real home in exploitation cinema. Guaranteed, it's not for everyone but given a particular upbringing you might just find there's nothing that satisfies quite like it. Where others grimace, you run to it. It provides truth when all else fails. At some point, it began to occur to me that all the Bruce Lee movies and Mad Max mayhem I found lying around the house on dodgy DVDs my father brought home from his time working in the Philippines (let's not forget how many good movies were shot out there by New World Pictures) were all the same. Whether it be kung fu, apocalyptic action or sadistic torture it all falls under the same roof of grindhouse, baby! All those Friday night thrills. That's why it appealed to me. It's what I remember and where I feel most comfortable to work within. Where I can simultaneously entertain and hide pieces of my mind. And here was Electric Wizard fusing all that together. Taking inspiration from film, sampling as freely as the Wu and creating something new in the process. Not quite music and not quite film but Electric Wizard.

Certainly helped too that (as this book made even clearer) Jus reads all the same sci-fi nonsense I grew up with.

Pierre Boulle, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Dan O'Bannon, Robert E. Howard, HR Giger, HP Lovecraft and William Gibson. It's so hard to get over when they first started exploring these writers through cinema, making you wonder what happened to that wave of science fiction movies in the late '70s when matte paintings and set design were way better than the CGI today. When the design was used as an extension of story rather than in the purely bare bones functional and bland way it is today. Mixing high concept sci-fi with cartoony pulpy trash, this has always been the agenda for me.

Somehow Dan Franklin's book had me liking their Come My Fanatics album even more through cementing that imagery present in the album and revealing it from his perspective. Rather fittingly as I read that section, there was a lightning storm happening outside my window and I had the album blasting right in to my recently damaged ear drum (it's gotten worse since the Weedeater gig). As Jus says, there is no better way to fix a busted ear drum than with more doom. This seems like sound advice. Can he pay for my treatment?

When I mentioned the way the writer tells the story from his perspective, what I mean to say is chronologically. Personally, having gotten in to the band well past them forging their legacy, I'd never really thought of the narrative of their album progression before. It only makes the band more impressive. Like imagine you create the heaviest album the universe has ever witnessed, as in its too heavy for public consumption and then literally you fucking top it in every way only a few years later. As a younger fan in his late twenties, born only days before Come My Fanatics was released (there must be a connection there), reexperiencing it this way is mind blowing. I'm lucky I live in a world where it's just accepted at this point. Otherwise my brain might not have been able to comprehend how the heaviest can get heavier.

Must also thank this writer for making me return to Supercovern after sort of dismissing it because it didn't lie within the albums narratives and allowing me to respect it for what it is, a singular masterpiece. It's a real tragic point that as a music fan today, anything not on Spotify and not following the typical album format doesn't seem to really exist within a band's catalogue, causing me to never give it its fair full chance, devoting perhaps only a couple of listens on YouTube. Easy to say we need to battle the laziness and reject digital libraries but it doesn't change what happened. My behaviour has been, as Delbert Grady would say, "corrected" Consider me converted.

Another way this spectacular book has managed to make me somehow an even bigger fan of this band is through the location. Hearing all these tales of wicked Wimborne. A quiet town in Dorset, where you spend your time playing Psychomania through your local shop, tripping and when the tabs hits you, you suddenly start destroying the miniature model of the town like you're Godzilla. That shit had me in hysterics. The whole book did. There were times I was genuinely fuming with it like for fuck sake this is annoying me now, I'm try to read this book and I'm getting fucking nowhere cause every time I try to get a solid flow going another anecdote puts me in a fit of laughter and I have to take 5 minutes out to recover. Damn you all to hell Electric Wizard for committing the very serious crime of being funny when I'm trying to get my literature cock on.

Legalise Drugs and Murder being inspired by a hate for Tony Blair is an all timer. Always thought that business was a little silly and cringey from The Wizard unless you're not taking it too seriously. However, seeing it in this new light and knowing it comes from that bloody war criminal, I might have to get fully behind it. You know what. Bring it back. Up Jus Oborn too for getting kicked out of his home town of Wimborne for blowing up cop cars and antagonising with the local law enforcement. This town ain't big enough for the two of us. Cheers cops, now he just terrorises us all. He's everyone's problem now.

My favourite part comes even later in the book, when you hear about how the chaotic original line up met its demise. Eventually, after so much vent up frustration, they all start trying to stab each other. At least Tim and Mark were anyway. Jus gives up caring, leaves them to it, starts boning his future wife Liz and watching Werewolves on Wheels excessively. God, I want to embrace my let everyone fight amongst themselves whilst my future wife bone incessantly and get heavily in to trashy horror phase. Me and WHO?

By the end of this book, (saying that, it's not exactly a book to me but more of a manifesto for this magazine), it takes you on a journey comparable to The Great Rock'n'roll Swindle, which could well be Jus's unapproved guide to the music industry. His template for all those who dare to take it on.

Originally, there's this sense of punk purism and by the end its total understanding of how the game works. He becomes The Mack like Max Julien. The sheer impossibility of making a career of Dopethrones is illustrated. Learning along the way that in order to sustain your position you have to exploit that which seeks to exploit you. If anything that's the biggest fuck you, isn't it? Make a pop hit, make a million and do as you please. Maybe burn it if you're The KLF but that's a different story for a different day.

Dopethrone and Come My Fanatics were made by angry kids hammering it out on whatever equipment available to them, thinking they may die tomorrow and maybe they did. It's lightning in a bottle and its conditions are impossible to replicate as a career progresses. Other influences come in and the anger isn't so direct and channelled. You can improve but you can never better. As this band and their trashy horrors teach us, quality isn't everything. If they'd have carried on like that and survived, that would have been the lie. The horror of those early efforts is feeling that the world is going to blow, if that was the vibe across multiple albums somewhere along the line you'd feel bullshitted with the bang that never came.

Alternatively, The Wizard have opted to explore the notion of being heavy in all kinds of inconceivable ways, each time giving new meaning to the word. Now we're in a whole different era. We’ve had the overly experimental Let us Prey, the image re-defining Witchcult Today (with the undeniable help of Liz), the self-sampling nostalgic Time to Die and now it seems the only step after that has been the self-parodying late career Wizard Bloody Wizard. An effort deemed by some to be a step too far but what lies next for The Wizard?

Going back to the whole location thing, it recalls my OG love for RZA. The pleasure of this book is seeing Jus make this personal connection between his own environment and the texts/films/music that he was engorging on. Seeing how it related to his experiences and re-interpreting their narrative around that. Real or imagined. Forming this strange meeting point between two worlds of art and mind. Location isn't talked about enough in art, it really interests me and I believe it should make for more of a driving force than it does. As the abstract and reality face each other off in the mirror, dancing together until they both cross each other's lines to form the unique and in this case can only be described as Electric Wizard.

We need more of what I have previously termed PsychoCondo (see Vol. 1 Issue #7). An expansion of mise en scene in cinema and psychogeography that deals with shared living space chosen by the director (or dreamer) to explore the avenues of their mind and where themes can really wrestle. Think The Shining and Shock Corridor as basic examples. The articulation of abstract inner space, it's meeting with the outside space and the war of the writers ideas is the basis for PyshchoCondo. The world of Wimborne, the world of Oborn and the resulting Funeralopolis. That relationship between them all is what hooks me like a drug. This book will dissect them for you.

With the heavily atmospheric and evocative Electric Wizard, I see the perfect place to explore my theories of PsychoCondo. They are the sound to the images I wish to create, my constant source of inspiration. An endless loop of destruction and creation caught in a whirl of mania walking between worlds. The gateway to creative freedom. Exactly the reason why they've had me obsessed for so long. The more cohesive a vision the more I'm drawn in and this one is strong.

Franklin is very much on the same wavelength about the visualisation projected back on to cinema as being the future of The Wizard. Proof being in the title of his other book he's written prior to this called Heavy: How Metal Changes the Way we See the World Felt a sort of kinship with him when he mentions that he lost his shoe at an Oddfuture gig. I'd like to add, I lost a shoe at a Death Grips gig once, except somehow I managed to find it again. Moved in unison with the crowd around the room full circle, put my foot down and in a near fatalistic motion it landed right back in the shoe about 500 steps and 22 minutes later.

Electric Wizards admiration for films and the way certain disregarded ones stand out to them is an area underwritten about in film criticism. They see textures and atmosphere as a primary form of storytelling even taking prevalence over plot. They can smell sweat and feel crumbling castle walls. These guys were influenced by films and I think it's now time films were influenced by them. We've come full circle. This is where we are in the grand plan. The Wizard entered through one door, came out the other side and are now ready for the Return Trip. No more singles. No more Day Trippers. In my head now, watching those older films back from the early '70s I can hear their music playing over it. Joe Begos has shown some potential with how their music could sound when mixed with film and there's that incredible version of Werewolves on Wheels set to just Electric Wizard but I think I can do better.

To set expectations from the outset, we're not going to win any Oscars like that Hollywood hound Trent Reznor but we will be the greatest. By the time I depart this mortal coil and this fucking world fucking burns away, mark my words, I intend to show the true cinematic potential of Electric Wizard (you've seen nothing yet) and to converge their horrible sound with everything I have to offer using whatever means available. Pen or camera, whatever sticks like blood. Will we ever reach our journey's end, find a new world and start again?

Author: Dan Franklin

Publisher: White Rabbit

Country: UK

Pages: 343

Book Description: Finally, a book on the world's heaviest band. Follow them from their Dorset to origins, through each album and for the final return trip. Writer Franklin, Quietus critic and author of Heavy: How Metal Changes the Way We See the World offers a psychedelic exploration that combines landscapes and soundscapes to get to the heart of The Wizard.

Bonus Points:

-Jus's da calling highly talented nerd Robert Fripp "Fripper" back in the day

-Jus and his mates pretending to be Godzilla when the acid hit back in the day and knocking over miniature models of the town

-"Gellering" riffs

-Jus sticking to his guns and refusing to add nu metal elements by copying popular acts like Linkin Park and Slipknot

-The block of blue cheese found in Shaun's duffle bag, which reminded me of a similar incident on a 12 hour bus to Falmouth where I got heavily drunk and forgot about a cheese burger in my pocket and it stank out the whole bus. Danger Mouse still hasn't forgiven me for that one

-All the original line up trying to stab each other whilst Jus and his future wife start boning and watching Werewolf on Wheels excessively

Dawn, crawling down the back streets of Liverpool, vision all blurred, unable to stand up without leaning on brick walls and a menacing man finds me mid throwing up by some back alley bins. He asks me if I want to view some old porn loops and do lemo in his basement. Slightly dangerous? Slightly stupid? How could I say no? So long as he doesn't butt fuck me. I make this my one request. He gives me 3 shots of vodka and lines up the lemo to smooth the senses and then takes me down to hell where the porn collection is strong and ever growing. The devils in desire and he's been let out of his cage for one night only. Next to the porn is stacks and stacks of tins. A smut film enthusiast and a prepper. Who was this guy? Come Armageddon, I know where I'm going.

His name is Lance Wormstrong and he loves porn. Moustache lovers will be glad to know he's still rocking one. Keeping it alive for team sleaze. Tank tops fill his wardrobes. Dumbbells are glued to his arms. Whether mullets are back on the menu doesn't bother him because he'll always be sporting one in ode to his hero Kurt Russell. In fashion? Out of Fashion? Who cares? Such an issue never occupies his mind because as has been revealed, this is no phase for him. He lives his look. Posers and part timers get out of his way. We got a Zealot. Perhaps, he doesn't see the outside world much but he's seen every pussy from the '70s. A scientist and a historian, Lance claims to have seen the pussy hairs gradually die back to baldness and fade from the human race. A fair trade. Except there's no substituting for the real thing now, is there? Gazing upon my host for the evening, I come to the conclusion, the line between loser and legend isn't always so clear.

Scrolling through the selection, I ask if he has, "Any Lasse Braun?". A hairy bandana donning sex freak who became King of the peep show back in the good old days when those little spaces were still around for viewing endless 8mms and people weren't so private about these things.