Interview: Electric Wizard’s Jus Oborn on weed, satan, and the band’s first North American tour in a decade

What are you hoping to do with your Witchfinder Records imprint?

It was just an idea I had … I’m not entirely sure where heavy music’s at at the moment, and it’s probably just a way to define it.

We’re keeping the idea of Witchfinder as kind of like, an inquisition against the kind of bands we’re not too keen on anymore.

I’m not naming any names or whatever. I hope to bring in bands and kind of just define, not a new style but … people will know they’ll hear the right kind of band, cool, heavy shit, you know? I think there’s so much out there these days, it’s hard to know where to start!

Do you find it harder to discover good new music now, even though everything is available?

Oh, I think so, yeah. There’s a hell of a lot of self-produced music out there, and to be honest, 75% of it isn’t that good, so you’re waiting for a lot, you know? There was a time when there was a kind of … filter against all the junk, you know? There’s too much now, too much music for everyone. It’s devalued it in many ways.

Even technically devalued, because people aren’t paying for it.

Well on one level, yeah, totally. It’s treated very poorly in away. People will invest a lot more energy into a movie.

You’ve been clear that the new record isn’t limited in any way; how do you feel about the trend of “collectible” LP’s?

It’s just mercenary; you’re screwing the situation at the moment. People have got disposable income … I’m not against things being limited, but there’s certain stuff, like a band, you want to put out smaller releases, 7”s, and you don’t want it to become a big thing. But trying to create collectibles is pretty fucking weird, you know? People used to create collectibles by default, because there was a mispressing or like, it didn’t get pressed properly. The idea of creating it is kind of weird, it’s like buying those fucking plates out of the back of Sunday newspapers. I don’t know if you have those in the States or in Canada, haha. I’ve clearly heard of the fact that there’s a few bands out there where people will pretty much buy the record because they’re like, getting a present in the post from Santa. They don’t really give a shit what the music is. I’d love to sell a million records in like, five fucking elaborate stand-up cardboard houses or whatever. That would be cool, ha! A lot of the bands make a bit of coffer of that.

Then you get certain labels, ones that we’re not so friendly with anymore, who still pay the band like .20 cents when they’re selling the records for $50 bucks, which doesn’t seem too fair to me.

The recent Electric Wizard vinyl represses were pretty pricey.

Yeah, and deliberately so. They were released in limited different colors and all this shit, to inflate the price for a record, you know?

Just to take things back a bit, was there any kind of scene for the band to latch onto back in Dorset?

Um, I mean, there’s all sorts of stuff there, Dorset has a pretty ancient culture, which goes back to pre-Christian times. It’s where the druids are …

We’d drop acid and get this sense of like, dethroned fucking kings, you know?

Like Dorset used to be something majestic and now we’re like decaying in ruins, you know? That came through the music, I think. And it’s kind of an epic landscape as well, in the north part. Those big rolling hills. I love that fucking sky, you know? It’s not quite as “chocolate box” as some places; I’m not too keen on that. It’s a bit more rural.

Is it true that you hate big cities?

I loathe them, ha! I guess because of my environment and upbringing, I don’t enjoy them at all. When I was 17 or 18 I moved to London for a couple of years, and I had a lot of fun, you know? I went to gigs and parties and shit. But in the end, it isn’t good for me.

Were there any local bands you felt any kinship with back then?

It was kind of a weird scene; there was punk rock bands, goth bands, kind of fledgling hardcore and grindcore bands. Everyone just kind of got together with the idea that we could make some music. It was kind of basic back then, you know? No one really defined their style back then, because if you did, you wouldn’t be playing gigs with anyone.

What were some of your non-musical influences at that time? Were there any particular authors or filmmakers that were influencing you?

Well, I grew up reading a lot of horror stuff, and black magic and occult stuff. I grew up with that more than anything, more than music really. My mum would buy these magazines with the occult and witchcraft, and paperbacks about like Hell’s Angels, and there’d be all sorts of this shit lying around, haha. To me, to find there was music that kind of related to that was pretty exciting. When I got turned to metal, I was really adamant that it had to be like, satanic music, you know? I was really into Venom and Slayer and Black Sabbath, and anything like that. And then things got a bit thrash, and I was like, “What’s happening?” And then in a perverse way, I got into bands like Trouble, because I liked the idea that they were like, completely anti-satanic.

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