Black Wizard deliver competent, bearded, neck pickup, blues-based power chord fuzz retro metal. This gumbo mix is tasty, with lots of juicy morsels of riffs and vocal passages, but it's not all that different from what's being served at other similar places around the Metal food court (OK, enough of the food metaphor).

Their 2016 album, "New Waste", echoes of The Sword, Monster Magnet, Wolfmother, Mastodon, and of course, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath - - just with a little less time spent in outer space. It's a distant cousin of the music of Joe Bonamassa, just without JB's singular bluesy guitar voice. The guitar work here is unremarkably good. They enjoy occasional slightly Maiden-y harmonized guitar bridges, which are far more engaging than the solos.

I can recommend "New Waste" with confidence. It earns a solid B. Not an A, but definitely not a C or lower. If you have the itch for slightly sludgy, earthbound, 70s-influenced Metal, then Black Wizard will scratch it. ‘Laughing and Lost’, (that final section is magic!) ‘Unnecessary Evil’, and ‘Vivian Girls’ are the best of the tracks.