With their fourth album, Merlin make some tweaks to their blend of heavy psych, doom metal, and country western music, blurring in a little jazz by way of horn accents and sleeker string tones for a more upbeat vibe in comparison to their earlier albums.  Their grasp of how to organically move songs from brooding riffs to speedy intensity holds strong, with quicker transitions in play, and the melodies still manage to burrow into the back of the mind before resurfacing piece-meal in memory days later.

At the same time, it feels uncharacteristically short, particularly with the dwarfing of ~11-minute closing track “The Wizard Suite” when held up against “Tales of the Wasteland”, the previous album’s ~23-minute finisher.  Aside from that sense of compression, there’s a fair amount to enjoy with the music’s shaping, and the portions which drop the vocals and drift off into the most indulgent psychedelic territory stand out as probably the most distinctive part of the album. 

Unfortunately, and unlike their last two LPs, The Wizard lacks a strong ‘single’ song, something with a melody and chorus strong enough to stick in the mind in full and pull listeners back in for a go at the other tunes that surround it.  “The Wizard Suite” comes closest, with its recurring chants of “I am the wizard!”, and lengthy riff ruminations, but the broad travels of its bridges introduce too much rambling to quite meet the bill.  The shows of the band expanding their instrumental palette are welcome, but while the energy is there (and much of it surely makes for great live material), it just doesn’t feel as fully or coherently realized as their last couple of outings.