Watain - Trident Wolf Eclipse

After a little over four years since their previous effort, Sweden’s black metal monolith, Watain, have returned to kick the year off with their tonally enhanced and exceptionally heavy form of classic black metal. Opting for clarity and attention to detail rather than grainy rawness at the production helm, Watain drew out every vital drop of spirituality and heaviness from their otherwise traditional black metal sound, proudly shedding light on every detail of their finely crafted songs and established themselves as the 21st century’s black metal flagship with the breakthrough of their 2003 sophomore effort, Casus Luciferi, and the solidification of their presence on its masterful follow-up, Sworn to the Dark (one of my favorite black metal albums ever hearing), about three years later. Consistently slower writers, Watain managed to put forth a fourth black metal offering in 2010, an album consistent with their established and mastered style and one I hardly consider a slump in viciousness for the high-bar group considering its predecessor, but it was with their next album in 2013, The Wild Hunt, that Watain sent their fans and witnesses a curve ball.

I didn’t really take kindly at first to the band’s seemingly less venomous bite and strange forays away from their black metal strength on The Wild Hunt, but the progressiveness and the diversity of sound on the album eventually grew on me and I now find myself spinning it just as much as Sworn to the Dark and Casus Luciferi. It’s not a Load / Reload type of stylistic departure or anything. It’s a shift only slightly comparable to that of the black album, but it was enough to cause similar upset among fans and bring them to a similar position in their ever-blossoming (or exploding) career, with competing pressures on what would become of their next album.

Well that album is here, and it’s a statement as bold as Watain are now expected to be making. Taking usually three to four years between albums, Watain are not keen to rush anything to completion and it shows with the intricacy and purposefulness of each release. The time gap between The Wild Hunt and Trident Wolf Eclipse is the largest yet and the band have proven again that they put in the work.

Trident Wolf Eclipse could be seen as kind of a safe move for the band as they return to their more directly black metal ways, but even a safe move for Watain comes with the caveat of great expectations. Shorter even than their debut, Trident Wolf Eclipse is the band’s shortest LP yet (the standard version at least). A perhaps conscious pullback from the sprawling nature of certain parts of The Wild Hunt, Watain are quick and to the point on the eight main tracks of Trident Wolf Eclipse and seem to have a quite singular mission in mind: fiery, relentless, top-shelf black metal. Watain seem to have spent their time streamlining their approach, not lingering much on more spacey sections of the music, opting to condense their style. But this is not simply Watain by the numbers, not shortened for some ill-fated radio accessibility, Watain still throw plenty of surprises into the mix. The album’s chaotic opening with “Nuclear Alchemy” showcases the band’s sheer hunger for an attack even more rabid than their standard, bringing a novel edge to further sharpen and elevate their already piercing brand of black metal as the track becomes completely unhinged in its last minute. The second side’s first track, “A Throne Below”, reaches similar degrees of madness, after its more atmospheric main section, with the unrestrained wailing of its guitars over concussion-inducing blast beats. The moments of fantastic frenzy, however, feel too few and too subdued at times on an album as short and as intentionally bold as this. Yes, Watain do still bring new musical ideas to the table, but it seems like it was a difficult task blending some of it with the particularly constantly aggressive black metal style they sought throughout this album, resulting perhaps in some seemingly less fit experimental ideas being scrapped.

To get into more depth in the track listing, “Teufelsreich” finds the band working through mostly the creepier, gothic side of black metal, not in a cheesy, meandering manner, but it sounds like a finely condensed version of what might have shown up on Sworn to the Dark. “Furor Diabolicus”, on the other hand, breaks into a fiery sprint, sounding like the rising up of hell from below the Earth. The meat-and-taters “Ultra (Pandemoniac)” and the epic-sounding “Towards the Sanctuary” play hardly any differently than the rest of the fast material on the album (that being still with some noteworthy flair to each), but “The Fire of Power” closes the album in an exciting enough fashion with its well-stacked movements and climactic overtone to make the album’s experience not feel completely truncated.

Upon initial listens, it’s easy to miss much of the album’s nuance and hear it as Watain at their most basic, blending in as just about any other black metal band, which is true to a degree. But luckily the album does reveal its deep colors eventually and makes for a worthwhile listen, acting potentially as the more straightforward yin to The Wild Hunt’s more expansive yang. Nevertheless, Trident Wolf Eclipse sounds, not just due to its short run time, like less Watain than what usually comes with a Watain album.

Overall, Trident Wolf Eclipse is an album that, while still compositionally and productionally above most black metal out there significantly, sounds like Watain just blending into the murk of black metal more than they ever have since their debut, rather than standing out boldly or pushing its boundaries. It’s an album that’s fine and dandy, but in a line-up with Sworn to the Dark, Lawless Darkness, The Wild Hunt, and Casus Luciferi, the fact that its only real differentiating qualities are its quick straightforwardness and its abruptness will probably condemn it to being Watain’s most overshadowed album yet.