Electric Wizard & Earache?

Question: You've talked about the northern doom and earache before. Moving further south west Im wondering did earache ever consider electric wizard for the label? Being as this was around the time you had sleep and cathedral on the label. Also were they a factor in as you've mentioned before having earache make rise above either a sub label of or distro for rise above. Quite interested in this being as lee has mentioned before how EW did what cathedral did but took it further and are better musically. Plus because of Jus osborns interest in early death metal im sure you would have crossed paths with them before. From:

Answer: Dorset, UK's Electric Wizard (mainman Jus Oborn pictured) are hands down one of the most crushingly heavy bands I've ever witnessed, and I've seen them all.But it was'nt always that way, as in the early days when Earache had Sleep, Cathedral, and Iron Monkey making waves, Electric Wizard were just promising newcomers from some backwoods town in sleepy south-west England, or thats how they appeared to me.

Earache was in touch with Jus quite a lot when he had his pre-Wizard Doomy/Death metal band 'Eternal'.I remember thinking long and hard about Jus, he was talented and very much an avid Doom/Death scenester (a bit like Harry from London deathsters Decomposed) and I think this was part of the reason we never offered them a deal- we simply never physically met- also I recall we had enough Doom on our plate at the time already.

I actually don't think Electric Wizard ever played near Nottingham in the early days either, preferring to play shows in London, which was nearer to them.It was seriously late in the day before I actually saw them play, and once Rise Above had snapped them up to a deal, it was not our style to make waves with other people's bands so we left Wizard well alone.Rise Above's Lee Dorrian was actually signed to Earache for most of the 90's as Cathedral, and it was simply not on to mess with his label, though we did hold talks about becoming its official licensee but couldn't agree terms.

It was Rise Above's expert handling of the band which has ensured their long-term success and legendary status among the Doom cognescenti.