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Welcome to the Witch House: Occult rock pioneers Black Widow live on Germany’s ‘Beat-Club,’ 1970
04.27.2015
11:22 am
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Black Widow, formed in Leicester, England, in 1969, were both more prog and more authentically occult than Black Sabbath (who formed a year earlier) but lacked that ineffably heavy quality (as well as the righteous hooks of Tony Iommi) that would make their Birmingham rivals a rock band for the ages.

Black Widow was probably best known for their collaborations with Alex Sanders, who was known as “King of the Witches,” and his wife Maxine Sanders, who was sort of the poster girl for black magic back in the early 1970s. It is said that Alex warned them that they were in danger of evoking a “she devil” with their rock.

I thought that perhaps it was a skyclad Maxine Sanders who joins them around the start of “Seduction,” about halfway through the set, but it was, in fact, a local Leicester lass named “Katie,” according to an article from the time.

In this 55-minute video that appeared on the terrific rock show Beat-Club in 1970 on the German TV channel ARD, Black Widow plays their latest album Sacrifice in full. As befits any proper black magic prog performance, it ends with a 15-minute sacrifice.
 

Singer Kip Trevor engaging in the show-stopping “Sacrifice” at the end of the program
 
In an interview a while back, Clive Jones, the band’s resident woodwind guy (he plays sax, clarinet, and flute on the Beat-Club show) who unfortunately passed away in 2014, spoke with some bitterness about Black Sabbath (“I just wish they would stop blocking us in books”) and also dropped an interesting tidbit:
 

Q: How black was Black Widow?

A: Black Widow was the real thing we learnt about the occult and all the words and rituals are correct. Alex Sanders always warned us we could invoke the Devil, and I have met the devil twice, once when i was alone in the daytime and once when I was with another band at night and most of us saw him (a long story).

 
Wouldn’t mind hearing more about that!

One of the Satanic high points of the show surely comes around the 21st minute, during “Come to the Sabbat,” when the chorus intones, “Come, come, come to the Sabbat / Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there” over and over again—it’s actually quite catchy.

Got to hand it to ARD, they gave zero fucks, presenting without the slightest tinge of irony or judgment the most Satanic musical performance I have ever seen on television.
 

 
via {feuilleton}

Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.27.2015
11:22 am
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Demons of the Night Gather: Black Widow, amazing, obscure early 70s ‘Satanic’ prog rock group
07.24.2013
03:49 pm
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Black Widow were an early 70s British progrock group known primarily for their use of occult and often outright Satanic imagery in their act. They “consulted” with “King of the Witches,” Alex Sanders about the rituals they performed onstage, and he is said to have advised them that they were in danger of evoking a “she devil.” (That’s a buck-naked Maxine Sanders seen on one of their picture sleeves).

Their best known song, not really a hit, but it’s excellent just the same, was “Come To The Sabbat.” With its persistent sonorous chant of “Come, come, come to the Sabbat, come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there” and that flute, Black Widow really didn’t sound like anybody else (maybe a more evil-sounding Uriah Heep?). Too bad that they disbanded after three albums and not much interest, because Black Widow could rock.

Black Widow actually recorded one album before they split that was never released, but it did eventually come out in 1999 on Mystic Records. Black Widow reformed in 2011 and put out new music. There’s even been a Black Widow tribute album made by various doom metal bands.

Thankfully, for such an obscure group, there was a pretty decent documentation of Black Widow’s stage act left behind due to a 1970 Beat Club appearance. In it, they perform the entirety of their Sacrifice album. It was released on by Mystic Records in 2007 as Demons of the Night Gather to See Black Widow.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.24.2013
03:49 pm
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