Australia's Rebel Wizard employs a lethal blend of fidelity-be-damned black metal and fist-pumping, over-the-top heavy metal that mastermind Bob Nekrasov describes as "the new wave of negative wizard metal." Emerging in the early 2010s, the one-man band issued his debut album, Triumph of Gloom, in 2016, and has continued to pick at the carcasses of icy extreme metal and riff-heavy NWOBHM on subsequent efforts like Voluptuous Worship of Rapture and Response (2018) and Magickal Mystical Indifference (2020). Melbourne-based Bob Nekrasov, who also operates the long-running mononymic black metal/noise rock project Nekrasov, started Rebel Wizard in 2012. Looking to distill his three decades of heavy metal consumption into something truly representative of his tastes, he commenced combining the soaring guitarmonies of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden with the blackened, lo-fi thrash of Emperor and Darkthrone. A steady stream of singles and EPs preceded the arrival of the project's first full-length effort, 2016's Triumph of Gloom, which was released via Prosthetic Records and garnered significant amounts of praise in the metal underground. Voluptuous Worship of Rapture and Response was released two years later, with the headbanging and neck-snapping Magickal Mystical Indifference arriving in 2020. ~ James Christopher Monger