REVIEW: WATAIN - The Agony and Ecstasy of Watain

 

WATAIN - The Agony and Ecstasy of Watain

Nuclear Blast Records

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A great release as was with 'Lawless Darkness'.  I don't own any other of theirs.  These guys show the world how well black metal should be played and have originality to it.  Intensity is not the word for it, more like a blistering onslaught! Depressing black metal but not entirely.  I've found it a little bit difficult to write about this because there's so many changes.  But that's what makes it interesting.  It isn't THAT fast musically.  It's rather dealing with tempo changes pretty drastically.  Melodies that are depressing and a unique guitar tone to it.  The vocals go great with the music.  It's pretty spot-on!

I like the guitars and the vocals the most out of this whole onslaught.  I think that they really got super creative on this and took it from there.  These guys are well established in the black metal community.  What a triumphant release!  I liked all the songs and no instances of this are boring or straight humdrum.  This is an album that needs more followers listening to it.  Blasphemous, evil, eerie and devilish.  I think they had a step up from previous albums.  They seemed to diversify and make use with sounds that are amazingly constructed.  A difficult one to wrap our heads around musically speaking.

The production was a little raw, but not overly so.  The atmosphere is what sucks you in!  The slow points to the album is where the evil lurks.  Not too many lead guitar bits but the rhythms are powerful.  And the aura is chilling.  This whole album isn't that fast.  There's points where they have interludes.  Kind of like old Opeth, to make that kind of distinction.  All in all, a great release.  These guys manipulate sounds and some tracks never seem to get out of their pit.  Others that are fast and furious.  As I say, they diversify.  The execution is top notch.  They know exactly what they're doing musically.

I liked this whole album.  I thought it did no wrong in any respect.  A very likable black metal based release. These guys know how to make songwriting their friend.  I bought the CD but streaming it is ok to see if this is your "thing."  Some of it sounds like old  Marduk, just in certain places.  But they're not holding blast beats for a long while.  They are changing it up a lot.  So yeah, show support for the band and buy the CD.  These guys could use a lot more followers especially if black metal is your gig.  I like it only in small doses.  Being prone to their darkness, I can only take this on occasion.  Check it out!

Ryan “Death8699” Fanucchi