Wizard Tattoo – Fables Of The Damned

 

 

Wizard Tattoo – Fables Of The Damned
Self-released – 2023
Rock, Metal, Stoner, Doom
Rated: ****

There's three things in this world that you need: Respect for all kinds of life, a nice bowel movement on a regular basis, a navy blazer, and a Wizard Tattoo. Errr, there are four things in this world you need. Out since the end of June, the new Wizard Tattoo album Fables Of The Damned. The one-man project by Bram The Bard, where the man issues his wisdom through riffs and parables. For the man is a storyteller, a master at making clashing patterns, weaving flourishes of country and Americana expertly into his metal, his doom and his ability to deliver a haunting melody. On paper it shouldn’t work, a four-and-a-half-minute slow, almost spoken-word piece, that trickles like a brook through the rocks. But there is something truly hypnotic and grandiose about that middle track Any Which Way But Tuned, which seems to borrow as much as it can from folkloristic songs from across the globe, and by way of repetition turning it into this highly evocative legend. It’s so different from what came before, all that eighties reminiscent metal, that some might not see the strength of that one piece alone. And then to follow that with the most doom track, The Ghost Of Doctor Beast, a slow-moving beast, pushed forward by intense riffs and decapitated by wonderful key work at the very end. Talking about ends, he finishes this tome filled with Fables Of The Damned with an instrumental called Abendrote. An acoustic, symphonic-esque, end titles accompanying song that sees the hero, villain or sole surviving Wizard disappear over the horizon… As the sun slowly sets…

(Written by JK)

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