A review usually needs a little background history, however, the real story of Black Widow would need a whole book – now there’s a thought.
Part of that dark story really needs to be told to show just why the release of Demons Of The Night Gather To See Black Widow Live (Mystic Records) is of such interest and why Black Widow still have a cult following nearly forty years since their demise.
Leicester’s Black Widow were seemingly cursed with bad luck and bad timing. Confusion with Black Sabbath, controversy over their live stage performance of Sacrifice, and just plain bad fortune dogged their progress and led to their comparatively early demise.
Timing is everything for a band and it seemed that some force was at work to ensure that fate turned most definitely against them. What we are left with is a band that now has a cult following, a reputation of playing with fire, and a heritage of some lost gems musically.
For those that don’t know, Black Widow was formed in England in the late sixties. When drummer Clive Box came up with the idea of doing an album based on witchcraft and black magic, Black Widow were born. They were, without doubt, the black magic band of the time.
It was a reputation that led to confusion between them and Black Sabbath the latter, despite the upturned crosses that appeared on the first album, continually denied that they were anything of the sort. Black Widow meanwhile went the distance with it.
The album Sacrifice took six months to write. The stage show that accompanied it was to prove to be an authentic experience into the realms of black magic. The show became instantly controversial as it contained nudity and sacrifice. However, the real concerns lay a lot deeper.
The band has courted the advice of the UK’s self confessed ‘King Of The Witches’ Alex Sanders (1926-1988) and as a result it emerged that everything in the show was in fact disturbingly authentic. The words, the spells, the curses, the names, and the rituals were all the result of the advice of Sanders.
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