The explosion of ideas in the late sixties led to all sorts of weird and wonderful fixations. Wrapped up in the psychedelics and radical ideas, the very fabric of our place in the universe birthed a million new realities.
One thread in all of this was to dare to look in places we’d always been told were wrong. Attitudes towards sex, individual freedom, what was considered good, decent and what might be crossing some line from the normal world filled with squares, into the upside-down grooviness and idealism of counterculture. Whilst it wasn’t the most prominent part of this movement, one aspect the wide-eyed freaks zoned in on was the occult, and the spiky underworld of the dark lord.
In order see this as a problem depends on how fundamentally you believe or fear a god. For me, having no such issue, music that spotlights or celebrates the devil is a particularly rich vein to tap. This lucifer doesn’t seem particularly unpleasant or evil, perhaps even a touch more relatable than the more mainstream and acceptable opposite.
Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising film, Graham Bond’s later magik informed albums, Jimmy Page’s fixation with Aleister Crowley, or Bruce Haack’s Electric Lucifer all beam with a strange and unfamiliar, but undeniable sense of dimly lit positivity. Somewhere out there, armed with odd books, cloaks, and quite possibly bowing before unusual symbols drawn on the floor, was music that regularly rippled with excitement.
Return to The Sabbat by Black Widow is a very late addition to this story. The band formed in Leicester, England and had a fairly unremarkable trajectory through a few albums in the earlier 70’s. The earliest version of the band attracted some notoriety via a somewhat controversial stage show that incorporated various satanic ceremonies.
This new release – Return to The Sabbat, predates the bands existing discography. A revised line up who would go on to re-record a more financially supported official debut released in 1970, under the title Sacrifice. It might be perfectly understandable to regard this new addition as little more than an inferior acetate version of that album from the year before.
But that assumption would be wrong.
What Return to The Sabbat perhaps loses a little in production sheen and pristine clarity is more than eclipsed by its contents.
The amazing opener In Ancient Days is immediately worth the admission price. A slowly shuffling groove, coated in a surprisingly mellow sax, and shadowed in organ, as the lyrics loop like an irresistible crash course in the dark arts. The chorus, a welcomingly insistent earworm mantra for those unafraid to sing along –
I conjure thee
I conjure thee
I conjure thee
I conjure thee appear
I raise thee mighty demon, come before me, join me here…
Presuming the opening incantations work, despite the lyrics continuing to evoke devil vibes, the tracks that follow all beam with yet more musical curveballs. Way to Power is proggy psych, whilst Come To The Sabbat is a flute-led trancey groove framing an invitation to meet the king of the underworld. Conjuration – a rant hidden in jazzy grooves, Seduction settles into some truly bizarre lounge antics whilst Attack of The Demon is stuffed with funky organ, thrashing drums and acid guitars…
The closer Sacrifice, a full 11 minutes surging along with a huge uplifting flutey groove that never really gives up. The whole thing is a joy, a track that surely had audiences at the time unwittingly or otherwise, grooving in a very easy to adopt, form of devil worship.
Return to The Sabbat ends up being a bit of a contradiction. An album full of dark lyrics, counterbalanced by deceptively lighter and more universally appealing music. Back in the day, songs that might well have slipped under the radar of those not concentrating on the lyrics – a black smoke screen hiding in plain sight.
Return to The Sabbat might be an overlooked first chapter in a bands so-so history but this earliest part of Black Widow’s story feels fiendishly essential.
Return to The Sabbat is out today on Guerssen Records.
Available on LP and limited edition coloured vinyl LP here
obladada.com 