THE WIZARDS - The Exit Garden (CD)

With their very own mixture of seventies hard rock, traditional
heavy metal and occult imagery, The Wizards from Bilbao in
Spain have struck a chord with the contemporary metal public.
The band was originally formed in the spring of 2013. After
having recorded a four-track demo, they started gigging for
earnest in February 2014. Since then, The Wizards have released
three studio albums and toured mainly in Spain but also in
France, Portugal and Germany. "The Wizards" (2015) was
followed by "Full Moon In Scorpio" (2017) and "Rise Of The
Serpent" (2018). "The Exit Garden" is the name of their brand
new effort.
"The 'exit garden' is the place where the souls live, a place of
Dream and Myth," explains the guitarist the meaning of the title
of the new album. "It is also a place of Death. We like that place.
It 's exuberant and wild, but also quiet and easy." He carries on
to compare "The Exit Garden" with its predecessor "Rise Of The
Serpent": "The approach and the context of the two albums is
totally different. "Rise Of The Serpent" was written and recorded
shortly after our previous album, and our live activity was
increasing, so the pressure was high and we delivered an album.
This new album has been written and recorded after a very
strange and long period of low activity. The last two albums were
produced by Dean Rispler and this time around we produced the
album ourselves." "We recorded in Slippery Studios," the
guitarist specifies, "a small but efficient studio near Burgos in
Spain. This time the rhythm section sounds tighter than ever.
Mastering has been done at Ultramarinos Mastering in
Barcelona."
"'Exit Garden' and 'Oniros' are maybe the most representative
tracks on the album," says Felipe. " There is some kind of weird
chemistry between us since our very first rehearsal, and we have
developed our sound together during ten years and four albums
that have gone by very fast."
Just like the earlier albums, with songs like the psychedelic
monster "Crawling Knights" or the haunting ballad "Dawn Of
Another Life", "The Exit Garden" once again shows influences by
bands such as Black Sabbath, first and foremost, but also early
UFO and Danzig. "That influence has always been in our sound,
everybody in the band loves Sabbath," confirms Felipe. "But
there are many other sources of inspiration for us ... Danzig and
UFO are bands that we also dig. We have many songs with quiet
and calm parts, we like writing and playing that kind of stuff too.
But 'Dawn Of Another Life' is our first song with no bass or
drums, in the vein of 'Changes' (by Black Sabbath), or 'Before
The Dawn' (Judas Priest), driven by vocals, guitar and keys."