Review Summary: Spiteful, merciless, extreme... Familiar.
Over the span of around ten years, Watain has soared to become one of the most successful black metal bands around. Back then, the band had recently released their third album,
“Sworn to the Dark”, and were still rooted in the underground scene. However, that album sprouted green shoots beneath the charred remains of their career. Every album Watain has released has overseen a progression of their sound and an expansion of their ambition to become the biggest, if not the most satanically devout, bands in the black metal scene, something that
“Lawless Darkness” subsequently underlined in 2010. Notoriously troublesome and brazenly outspoken individuals, Watain developed another reputation not long after the release of
“Lawless Darkness” as one of the most divisive bands within the genre.
Love it or loathe it,
“The Wild Hunt” took a larger leap than usual in 2013. Accused of packing the album with filler tracks between more invested singles, convicted of becoming sell-outs in daring to challenge their own motif by including a clean-spoken, progressive dirge on the album, Watain single-handedly helped reignite what it meant to be an ‘elitist’ within heavy metal. Behind the releases of their new album,
“Trident Wolf Eclipse”, the controversy that its predecessor sparked resurfaces and the masses appear to approach this beast more cautiously than before.
Most noticeable is the album’s brevity. At 34 minutes long, this album showcases the adrenalized aspects of punk mixed with the dark bile of black metal, both united under an umbrella of likeminded controversy. Straight away, “Nuclear Alchemy” delivers a devastating blow in just three minutes leaving barely any time to catch a breath between songs. Alongside Erik Danielsson vomiting out harrowed commands, “A Throne Below” features familiar torrents of scabrous and barbed riffs which sound like the band are leading Lucifer’s battalions into a charge towards the heavens. Watain flays the unnecessary skin off
“Trident Wolf Eclipse”, leaving only the meat and bone it requires do deliver what is absolutely necessary and nothing more.
Watain steers clear of the void that many of their counterpart’s leap into, inside which they lose their ability to conceive that an album’s production has an impact on its sound- all in the name of their outdated production remaining ‘pure’. Across the album but particularly on tracks such as “Furor Diabolicus” and the intense thrashiness of “Ultra (Pandemoniac)”, actual riffs are comprehensible on
“Trident Wolf Eclipse” that turn out to be brilliantly belligerent rather than what might sound like a hornet trapped in a jar. Opting for a more modern sounding production favours Watain as the echoing howls and rampaging grandeur of this album sounds distinctly coherent considering how destructive it appears to be.
Nevertheless, classic albums within black metal all illustrate a key atmosphere that transcends across the entire duration and displays innovation that other bands have not begun to even consider; the grandiose fantasy of Emperor’s
“In the Nightside Eclipse”, the melancholic vehemence of
“Transylvanian Hunger” by Darkthrone and the evil ambience of Burzum’s
“Hvis Lyset Tar Oss”, to name a few. Save for the brief sense of mysticism that “Sacred Damnation” unearths,
“Trident Wolf Eclipse” may be a frenzied record, yet, it showcases no distinctive attributes that would differentiate it from a number of other current black metal bands. This is a great album but considering the swift ascension of Watain’s career
“Trident Wolf Eclipse” is far from one of the greats
