THE WIZARDS - The Exit Garden LP HRR 942LP, ltd 750, 250 x black, 350 x orange crush + 150 x aqua blue/ black galaxy vinyl, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover, insert IAN MASON - vocals GEORGE DEE - guitars PHIL THE PAIN - guitars BARAKA BOY - bass DAVE O. SPARE - drums 01 The Exit Garden 02 Full Moon in Scorpio 03 Oniros 04 Holy Mountain Mind 05 Equinox of Fire 06 Questions 07 Crawling Knights 08 Dawn of Another Life AVAILABLE

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. “We played our last pre-pandemic show in December 2019,” explains guitarist Felipe of what The Wizards have been up to during the last six years. “Our intention was to have a three-month pause to write and rehearse the new album, but the lockdown and some other ‘private’ stuff kept the band on hold for far too long. We started playing live again in May 2022, but focusing more on writing new stuff we just played maybe ten shows since then. Our most active period was early 2017 until late 2019. Since »Full Moon In Scorpio« came out, we played a lot almost everywhere in Spain and visited Germany, France and Portugal. For »Rise Of The Serpent« we did a one-week tour in Germany in 2019. This year we also played ‘Headbangers Open Air’, which was a total blast, also ‘Hammer Of Doom’ in Würzburg and ‘Hell Over Hammaburg’, both in 2018. German festivals rule!” Since the beginning, the line-up of the band has not had a single change, so on the new album it’s once the same five guys playing. Felipe laughs: “We are like a dysfunctional but somewhat functional family.” “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. “But all of them are a good picture of what we are and where we are at right now. I think that we sound tighter than ever because we have been together for a very long time now. We know each other very well. 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), ‘Before The Dawn’ (Judas Priest) or even ‘Holiday’ (by the Scorpions), driven by vocals, guitar and keys. My personal favourite of those three is ‘Changes’, by the way.” MATTHIAS MADER