The Wizards - The Exit Garden - LP

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."

High Roller Records, black vinyl, ltd 250, insert, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover
Tracklist: 1. The Exit Garden 2. Full Moon In Scorpio 3. Oniros 4. Holy Mountain Mind 5. Equinox Of Fire 6. Questions 7. Crawling Knights 8. Dawn Of Another Life