Let Us Prey (2002) - Electric Wizard

Let Us Prey was released in 2002, and it stands as a strange, murky monolith in the Electric Wizard discography. Rather than attempting to outdo the sheer weight of Dopethrone, the band took a sharp left turn into occult psychedelia, avant-doom, and experimental horror soundscapes. It would also be the last album to feature the classic lineup of Jus Oborn, Tim Bagshaw, and Mark Greening—a trio that had already reshaped doom metal into something raw, ritualistic, and utterly feral.

This album doesn’t follow traditional songcraft. Instead, it feels like a séance—half composed of riffs and half of vapor. While it still features mammoth, fuzzed-out guitar and filthy doom passages, the record places equal emphasis on atmosphere: ambient interludes, synth-laden nightmares, and narcotic pacing that makes it feel more like a cursed transmission than a collection of songs.

Tracklist:

1. A Chosen Few

2. We, the Undead

3. Master Of Alchemy

4. The Outsider

5. Night Of The Shape

6. Priestess Of Mars

7. Mother Of Serpents

A Chosen Few begins the ritual with sinister grooves and the signature slow-churning doom that Oborn had perfected by this point. We, the Undead is the most immediate song on the album—faster, punkier, and venomous, it lurches forward with dirty energy before collapsing into the deeper, stranger corners of the record.

Then comes Master of Alchemy, arguably the album’s centerpiece. It stretches into multi-part doom delirium: the riffs feel like they’ve been submerged underwater, dragged through swampy distortion, and carved into something lurching and hypnotic. Oborn’s vocals are drenched in echo, sometimes more texture than speech, while Bagshaw and Greening weave a rhythm section that's deceptively loose but completely ritualistic in effect.

The Outsider channels Lovecraftian dread—haunting, claustrophobic, and filled with repetition that induces a trance state. Night of the Shape is a completely drumless, ambient interlude with eerie synths and horror-film keys. It’s less a song than a vision. Priestess of Mars continues the album's descent into astral projection: a crawling, drugged-out track where the fuzz becomes a fog, and the riffs dissolve into atmosphere. Then Mother of Serpents arrives like the final sermon—slow, haunted, and unrepentantly grim. It's the soundtrack to a funeral that never ends.

Let Us Prey is not for everyone. Those expecting hooks or even structure may walk away confused or disappointed. But for the doom faithful—for those who understand that Electric Wizard was never about catchy songwriting but rather conjuring oppressive moods and occult visions—this album offers a rare, lysergic descent into the heart of darkness. It’s the Wizard at their most unhinged, least accessible, and most willing to abandon metal convention in favor of mind-altering ritual.

It remains one of their most misunderstood yet rewarding records. Once it pulls you into its hallucinatory world, there's no coming back.