Watain – Lawless Darkness (2010)

The best Black Metal album of 2010 has finally arrived with “Lawless Darkness”. Yes, we know it’s early but we are calling it right now. We don’t think that any other BM album will be able to beat this masterful release. With 3 years on the works “Lawless Darkness” is here to rip you a new one.

Hailing from Sweden, Watian is one of the few true artists remaining in the current Black Metal scene crowded by posers and pussies. Under the moniker of “Black Metal Reborn”, Lawless Darkness has very much achieved and surpassed this expectation. The album is a journey into the occult with a brutal soundtrack.

The band does not need to rely in any gimmicks or extreme over-production, their musical sound is brutal, raw, and yet very well crafted. Going back to the basics of Black Metal, when it was meant to be destructive, evil, and dark; Watain has achieved a very well written release that feels like the old days of Black Metal (think of Darkthrone in the Transylvanian Hunger era). But this feeling is accompanied with the modern clarity that cheaper and better production offers.

With a plethora or crushing riffs and brutal solos, we get a magical sounding Black Metal foundation that does not need to rely on the ‘traditional’ abuse of tremolo-picking riffs that make me want to pee after a few songs, just a few of them are nice here and there. The guitar distortion is pretty straight forward and needs to ‘studio magic’ to sound very rich.

The drumming is very well structured and it’s mixed down in the final mix to not sound too overpowering like in many albums, but makes use aware of it’s presence with brutal double-kick assaults. The other thing we found interesting are the wolf sounds on “Wolves Curse”, they hell this song be very haunting.

Vocally, Watain’s front-man E delivers another crushing performances that will send chills through your skin, and he never has to rely on the hellish high pitched shrieks that most people are using these days. With a string musical foundation, Mr. E delivers the finishing punch to an almost perfect Black Metal release.

If you are tired of all the lame BM releases these days, you can rest assured that Watain’s “Lawless Darkness” will blow you away, and make you want to dig up old (and ‘real’) Black Metal releases from the 90’s. Watain is taking the banner of one of the top acts of Black Metal in the world and they do it with such force with this release.

Release: June 8th, 2010

Country: Sweden