CHAPTER 14
Sabbath Phase III: Earth, Sleep, Electric Wizard
Earth, Sleep, Electric Wizard and the drone descent
63 works, in the order the book names them
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001/Album
Headless Cross
Black Sabbath
Featuring only one original member in the form of tenacious guitarist Tony Iommi, Headless Cross’s accompanying personnel were Cozy Powell (drums/percussion), Laurence Cottle (bass), Tony Martin (vocals) and Geoff Nicholls (keyboards).
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002/Album
Born Again
Black Sabbath
Aged fifteen, Carlson lapped up Born Again, Sabbath’s 1983 album with Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan installed as temporary lead singer.
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003/Album
Earth 2
Earth
As much as it ushers in the next phase of the Sabbathian mode, Earth 2 also represents a kind of drastic regression.
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004/Album
Lysol
Melvins
Cast your mind back to Lysol by Melvins.
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005/EP
Extra-Capsular Extraction
Earth
Earth’s previous release, the thirty-minute Extra-Capsular Extraction EP, had used a drum machine and occasional vocals (provided by guests Kurt Cobain and Kelly Canary).
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006/Live album
Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars
Earth
Their name was inspired by the Earth live album Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars.
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007/Album/1999
The Grimmrobe Demos
Sunn O)))
The first Sunn O))) release, The Grimmrobe Demos (1999), climaxed with a 21-minute track named ‘Dylan Carlson’.
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008/Album/1995
Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions
Earth
The material on 1995’s Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions was recorded in two separate sessions, each one a year apart.
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009/Album
Phase 3
Earth
The material on 1995’s Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions was recorded in two separate sessions, each one a year apart.
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010/Album/1996
Pentastar: In the Style of Demons
Earth
While 1996’s Pentastar: In the Style of Demons still contains moments of minimalism and ambience, it’s the closest Carlson has ever come to recording ordinary rock songs.
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011/Album
Pentastar
Earth
While 1996’s Pentastar: In the Style of Demons still contains moments of minimalism and ambience, it’s the closest Carlson has ever come to recording ordinary rock songs.
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012/Book
Muse: Out of This World
Mark Beaumont
When The Guardian sent Mark Beaumont to review a Sunn O))) concert in 2015, the long-time NME scribe and author of the biography Muse: Out of This World was unmoved, emotionally speaking if not also in terms of his bowels.
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013/Book
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
Just try reading the exquisitely detailed and beautifully composed passages in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick when Ishmael is banging on about whale anatomy for page after page.
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014/TV series
The Trip
Michael Winterbottom
Immerse yourself in the monotonous comedy of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip, or else Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle: the humour contained therein might momentarily cease to be funny because it is quite so repetitive, and yet that bloody-minded repetition and resistance to the variation and pace of standard comedy techniques is paradoxically pleasing.
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015/TV series
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle
BBC
Immerse yourself in the monotonous comedy of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip, or else Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle: the humour contained therein might momentarily cease to be funny because it is quite so repetitive, and yet that bloody-minded repetition and resistance to the variation and pace of standard comedy techniques is paradoxically pleasing.
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016/Book
The Pale King
David Foster Wallace
When you’ve finally reached the end of Moby-Dick, why not crack open the spine of The Pale King, David Foster Wallace’s unfinished masterpiece about the beauty, power and untapped potential of boredom?
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017/Album/1994
Monster
REM
On a parenthetical note, Wallace is said to have enjoyed REM’S Monster (1994).
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018/Album
Automatic for the People
R.E.M.
A record designed for the hugely popular group’s return to the live circuit after an absence from the stage of over half a decade, Monster shocked listeners by rocking so hard in comparison to its hushed and reflective predecessor Automatic for the People.
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019/Book/1974
Something Happened
Joseph Heller
After completing The Pale King and revisiting Monster, join the select club of people who have read and relished Something Happened (1974), Joseph Heller’s underappreciated follow-up to Catch-22.
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020/Book
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
After completing The Pale King and revisiting Monster, join the select club of people who have read and relished Something Happened (1974), Joseph Heller’s underappreciated follow-up to Catch-22.
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021/Soundtrack
Dead Man
Neil Young
Influenced by the novels of Cormac McCarthy, Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack and the vintage guitar twangs of Duane Eddy, comeback album Hex; or, Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) opened the gateway to Earth’s subsequent progressions.
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022/Album/2005
Hex; or, Printing in the Infernal Method
Earth
Influenced by the novels of Cormac McCarthy, Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack and the vintage guitar twangs of Duane Eddy, comeback album Hex; or, Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) opened the gateway to Earth’s subsequent progressions.
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023/Album
Hex
Earth
Influenced by the novels of Cormac McCarthy, Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack and the vintage guitar twangs of Duane Eddy, comeback album Hex; or, Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) opened the gateway to Earth’s subsequent progressions.
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024/Album/2014
Primitive and Deadly
Earth
Primitive and Deadly, released in 2014, reintroduced guest vocalists (Mark Lanegan and Rabia Shaheen Qazi) and upped the density of the distortion once again, without neglecting the compositional processes that Carlson had developed since Earth’s return.
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025/Album
Full upon Her Burning Lips
Earth
Its follow-up, 2019’s Full upon Her Burning Lips, stripped Earth back to the core duo of Carlson and Davies, with the guitarist limiting his layers of effects in aiming to hone a more ‘sensual’ style.
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026/Album/1993
Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version
Earth
Such are the resounding vibrations of Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version.
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027/Album
Volume One
Sleep
Released shortly before co-guitarist Justin Marler quit the group to become an orthodox monk on a remote Alaskan island, Sleep’s Volume One showed promise but contained scant indication that they would blossom into something truly special.
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028/Album/1992
Sleep’s Holy Mountain
Sleep
Once they had pared down to a trio, the band soldiered on with Sleep’s Holy Mountain, released in 1992 on Earache Records.
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029/Album
Holy Mountain
Sleep
Once they had pared down to a trio, the band soldiered on with Sleep’s Holy Mountain, released in 1992 on Earache Records.
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030/Album/2012
Dopesmoker
Sleep
He rightly recommends purchasing a CD version of Dopesmoker rather than the alternative option of a double-vinyl pressing for the explicit reason that it means ‘you can get utterly narnered once you’ve put it on and not have to get up for almost an hour and ten minutes.’ By the time of Sleep’s Hawkwind tour, the song hadn’t quite reached its eventual length, although even in its embryonic stages it was substantial enough for Sleep to walk onstage and introduce their set with the line ‘Hi, we’re Sleep and this is our last song.’
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031/Album
Power from Hell
Onslaught
Onslaught had delivered two underground thrash classics, 1985’s Power from Hell and 1986’s The Force, after which London signed Onslaught with the intention of polishing them up in order to break the lucrative American market that had been revealed by the success stories of Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer.
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032/Album
The Force
Onslaught
Onslaught had delivered two underground thrash classics, 1985’s Power from Hell and 1986’s The Force, after which London signed Onslaught with the intention of polishing them up in order to break the lucrative American market that had been revealed by the success stories of Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer.
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033/Album
In Search of Sanity
Onslaught
With 1989’s In Search of Sanity Onslaught achieved their highest ever UK chart position, but in the process they had lost a singer as well as their edge, not to mention the adoration of hardcore thrash fans and an important part of themselves.
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034/Album
One Hot Minute
Red Hot Chili Peppers
His credits included One Hot Minute by Red Hot Chili Peppers and Slayer’s dodgy punk covers album, Undisputed Attitude.
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035/Album
Undisputed Attitude
Slayer
His credits included One Hot Minute by Red Hot Chili Peppers and Slayer’s dodgy punk covers album, Undisputed Attitude.
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036/Album
Jerusalem
Sleep
That version was a mere 52 minutes long and was retitled Jerusalem.
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037/Album/2018
The Sciences
Sleep
The interior section of The Sciences’ gate-fold sleeve features a photograph of a breakfast table.
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038/Documentary
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
Penelope Spheeris
This refers to the singer’s appearance in Penelope Spheeris’s 1988 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, where Osbourne talks about the hard work required to be a successful rock band, the trappings of fame and the dangers of drug addiction.
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039/Album
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Wu-Tang Clan
RZA of Wu-Tang Clan rapped of how weed opened his mind, his distinctive production on Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) being particularly notable for its savvy use of space.
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040/Album/2000
Dopethrone
Electric Wizard
JUS OBORN: ‘They recorded other LPS apart from crappy Dopethrone.’
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041/Album/1967
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles
‘If you’ve only heard Elvis, I guess something like the cartoon psychedelia of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is going to sound pretty fucked up but to our ears it sounds like playground music,’ says Oborn.
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042/Album
Wizard Bloody Wizard
Electric Wizard
The title of their ninth album, Wizard Bloody Wizard, was adapted from Sabbath’s fifth.
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043/Album/1997
Come My Fanatics
Electric Wizard
Before Dopethrone came Electric Wizard’s 1995 self-titled debut – a record Oborn felt had failed to be as heavy as he’d envisaged – and their second effort, Come My Fanatics (1997), which did a grander job of sowing the seeds for the heaviness that was to follow.
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044/EP
Mentally Murdered
Napalm Death
Following the tradition of Napalm Death members leaving the group in order to embark on wholly different musical missions, vocalist Lee Dorrian quit after 1989’s Mentally Murdered EP to form the far doomier Cathedral.
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045/Album/1971
Master of Reality
Black Sabbath
He had never been quite the same since, at aged fourteen, he was introduced by a friend to Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality album.
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046/Compilation
Dark Passages
Rise Above Records
As label boss of Rise Above Records, Dorrian would also act as linchpin of the wider scene by releasing the music of fellow doomsters such as those featured on the 1991 compilation Dark Passages.
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047/Film
The Blair Witch Project
Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez
It looks not entirely dissimilar from the rickety house that acts as the location to the terrifying climactic scene of The Blair Witch Project.
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048/Album/1984
My War
Black Flag
As well as its obvious debts to Sabbath, Dopethrone was influenced by early Alice Cooper, the sludgy second side of Black Flag’s My War, extreme metal pioneers Venom, a million obscure horror movies along with their unsettling soundtracks, and the less Kerrang!-friendly sources of loudly psychedelic experimental bands such as Loop and My Bloody Valentine.
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049/Album
Holy Wood
Marilyn Manson
Before Manson could cobble together his own patchy reaction to Columbine with his band’s fourth album, Holy Wood, Jus Oborn channelled into ‘We Hate You’ his own schoolboy experiences of being goaded by small-town locals and labelled a freak.
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050/Book
The Dunwich Horror
H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror:
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051/TV series
20/20
ABC News
Dopethrone is bookended by samples from the American television news programme 20/20, which has run on the ABC network since 1978.
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052/Film
Mark of the Devil
Michael Armstrong
In its lyrics, Oborn inhabits the character of Albino, the disfigured witch hunter from the 1970 West German horror flick Mark of the Devil.
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053/Film
Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält
Michael Armstrong
The film’s original-language title is the more upfront: Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält, literally translating as ‘witches tortured until they bleed’.
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054/Album/1970
Paranoid
Black Sabbath
Crediting Sabbath as his first musical love, Oliveri was introduced to Paranoid under the guidance of his uncle.
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055/Album/1978
Never Say Die!
Black Sabbath
You could also look at most of the material on 1978’s messily eclectic Never Say Die!
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056/Album/1998
Powertrip
Monster Magnet
Monster Magnet became bona fide rock stars (albeit fairly briefly) with 1998’s Powertrip.
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057/Album
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
David Bowie
The stoner equivalent of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, the album was a self-fulfilling prophecy written by frontman Dave Wyndorf when he was holed up in a Las Vegas hotel room.
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058/Compilation
Nuggets
Various artists
You’ve got to own that shit, or who the fuck cares?’ Wyndorf ’s list of his most formative records includes Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation and albums by The Groundhogs, Grand Funk Railroad, Jethro Tull, Atomic Rooster, Blue Cheer and Blue Öyster Cult, alongside obscurer records by Dust, Captain Beyond and Sir Lord Baltimore.
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059/Album/1991
Spine of God
Monster Magnet
Debut album Spine of God (1991) was a scuzzy, sleazy and swirlsome concoction of punk, metal, garage rock and space rock.
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060/Album/1991
Tab
Monster Magnet
Even wilder is Tab, which was recorded beforehand but released after Spine of God.
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061/Album/2015
In the Name of All That Is Unholy
Evil Acidhead
Compiling their original late ’80s cassette releases, In the Name of All That Is Unholy is an exhaustive 78-minute slab of malevolent avant-acid mayhem constructed from psychosis-inducing lo-fi loops, creepy organ, deranged off-road noodling, all manner of antisocial guitar fuzz and lots of ugly feedback.
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062/Album/2016
Lost Chants/Last Chance
Kandodo/McBain
A more recent and digestible example is 2016’s Lost Chants/Last Chance, which McBain recorded over the course of one weekend in collaboration with Kandodo, who feature members of Bristol’s answer to Monster Magnet, The Heads.
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063/Album/1994
Welcome to Sky Valley
Kyuss
Its lengthy multipart songs blending seamlessly from one track to the next, it merited listening to as one complete whole rather than in bits, and was initially only available to buy on CD. In Kyuss’s case, although 1994’s Welcome to Sky Valley contains a series of clearly separate compositions, the band seriously considered issuing the record as an unbroken piece of music with no track indexes at all.
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