Watain - Lawless Darkness

Ugh, it's already happened: Watain have become aware of what it takes to "sound like" Watain at the expense of the emotional content that shaped that sound in the first place. First Dissection's Reinkaos pile of ass, then Funeral Mist's foray into industrial circus mallcore, and now this.

Lawless Darkness--a supposed comeback from the somewhat lackluster but in retrospect way superior Sworn to the Dark--is one of those albums that sounds fine in terms of technique, and yet it's difficult to put my finger on exactly why it doesn't resonate with me or impassion me or even keep me awake. It's unlikeable in a more abstract sense than simply sucking; it borrows elements from great albums and combines them into something holistically pointless and empty, which demonstrates a total lack of understanding of what made those elements work in their original contexts on the band's part. And rather than even appropriating them into something uniquely their own, stitches aside, Lawless Darkness joylessly shambles through these idiomatic motions as if it was composed in some spiritual, artistic vacuum, totally disconnected from any greater thematic content, yet likewise divorced from the experimental liberties that lack of meaning usually endows. The vocal style is still a half-clean raspy shouted one which lends itself to anthematic pseudo-vocal melodies, which would be fine if it weren't at the expense of instrumental nuance. Cruelly, this allows us to hear every adolescent "anti-cosmic Satanic" lyric; "SHOW ME THE SECRETS OF THE BLACK MOON! Heyy! Lucifer! Heyy! Lucifer!" I'm not even kidding about that last line. What an embarrassment.

The stench of insincerity is thick with this one, and the material is more tedious than it is challenging. A couple quasi-proggy 10+ minute songs like 'Wolfshirt's Curse' and 'Waters of Ain' that aren't as much aimless as they are practically stationary, spinning and gesturing in the "proper" motions but never actually going anywhere and taking you on half the emotional journey as Mayhem or Dissection songs that are less than half as long. And since Watain has become more or less a crude amalgam of those two bands, what's the point? This album does distance the band from the early Gothenburg influence that defined Sworn to the Dark, but listening to the leadwork still feels like a clown is cumming in your mouth. Moreover, a superficial step up in something vehicular of a greater idea like technique or technicality doesn't automatically constitute artistic substance.

To elaborate, what made Casus Luciferi outstanding in a way that was hard to define is that its sense of metacomposition was practically operatic. It took the trademark narrative style of black metal songwriting to a totally theatrical zenith with the harsh contrast of a crude, non-symphonic/non-"progressive" vocabulary; every riff served an emotional and storytelling purpose, and that's all that was needed. With Lawless Darkness, Watain have no story to tell, so they merely write ostentatious textbook melodic black metal around a Satan-shaped void.

Let's not distract from what really matters with the usual kvlt bitching about overproduction, popularity and merch-whoring, the fact that Erik comes off as a humiliating pretentious rockstar cokehead in every interview promoting this thing, or the fact these guys kinda look like gothic weenies. The point is Lawless Darkness has a soul made of melted plastic. Looks like we already have a strong contender for the most boring album of 2010. Dyngia.

Wishful thinking: redeem yourselves with a halfway decent album next time and then honor-split up, please. But $omehow I get the idea that'$ an unreali$tic pro$pect...

July 8, 2010

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