### Watain: Sworn to the dark

#### 05/03/07 || Lord K Philipson

Thru the years I have read quite a bit about Watain on some obscure forums here and there. I took them for another “trve” black metal band with a production that Tie Domi could have accomplished during one of his visits in the good’ol penalty box. I never had the intention to listen to them since that style simply isn’t what makes me all erect and shit.

I was fucken wrong. And sometimes I’m fucken happy to be wrong.

Watain is above that crap. Watain’s got fuckloads more to offer. They understand the importance of having a good sound (Necromorbus Studios is obviously a competent studio for black metal) and writing actual good songs with an evil atmosphere within them as the icing of the cake. It’s full of typical black metal riffing, you know what I mean when you hear it. Watain isn’t all about blasts either, which is really nice. They aren’t afraid to throw in some heavier shit with their faster offerings, and the similarities to Dissection aren’t far-fetched.

Watain never reaches Dark Funeral speed but instead settle themselves for the same pace as for example death/black metallers Necrophobic when it comes to being fast. Talking about Dark Funeral, Watain’s tune “Legions of the black light” spans over 8 minutes and sports a huge riff-theft from Dark Funeral’s song “Vobiscum Satanas”. Nothing wrong about that. Let’s just hope it’s meant as a tribute.

Watain also understands the importance of variation in black metal. Instead of just blasting through 11 tracks of badly produced corpsepaint music they offer slow-assed heavy tunes like, f.e, “The light that burns the sun”, one of the finest tunes on the album, though there’s definitely alot of gems on “Sworn to the dark”. The title track is another one with its awesome break at 1:50. Or the intro alone to album-closer “Stellarvore”... Now that’s how you create some fine fucken black metal pornography.

There’s plenty to explore with Watain. They are ofcourse not doing anything new but they are doing their thing with such finesse, attitude and dedication I can do nothing but applaud them bitches.

Watain’s easily turned into one of my fave black metal bands at the moment, surprisingly enough for me. Congratupenis, you have earned yourselves a new fan. I think it’s safe to say that “Sworn to the dark” is probably what most people hoped that Dissection’s “Reinkaos” would sound like. I demand that you fuckers check this out and gives it the attention it deserves. By the way, with a guy in the band named “P. Forsberg”, how can you fucken fail?

8 horns up out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Season Of Mist
- Website: www.templeofwatain.com
- Band
- E. Danielsson: vocals, bass
- P. Forsberg: guitars
- H. Jonsson: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Legions Of The Black Light
- 02. Satan’s Hunger
- 03. Withershins
- 04. Storm Of The Antichrist
- 05. The Light That Burns The Sun
- 06. Sworn To The Dark
- 07. Underneath The Cenotaph
- 08. The Serpent’s Chalice
- 09. Darkness And Death
- 10. Dead But Dreaming
- 11. Stellarvore