Watain - Sworn to the Dark (2007)

Somehow during the past decade Watain has completely eluded me. I mean, I knew the name, totally, I saw the magazine covers, I just never went and bought any of their albums until a month ago when I happened to find this album during a day trip down to Chicago where a friend and I visited three different record stores. To think that I've been missing out on these guys so long is quite a shame because, 'Sworn to the Dark' is absolutely brilliant.

Watain's roots date back to the late 90's when the band was formed in Uppsala, Sweden by Erik Danielsson, Pelle Forsberg, Håkan Jonsson and C. Blom (now an ex-member) as most likely a more traditional sounding black metal act. Since those early days four albums and several other releases have been unleashed and it seems Watain has nowadays reached a mainstream status by grabbing a Swedish Grammy for Best Hard Rock in 2011 with their most recent, 'Lawless Darkness.' Watain is however not quite a hard rock band.

It seems the big criticism around this album is that its a carbon copy of Dissection's classic, 'Storm of the Light's Bane,' which while a lot of that is true I just have to say, "What the fuck is wrong with that!" Dissection's influence on metal is monumental, so much so that your favorite band was almost certainly influenced by them and pretty much as far as I'm concerned you've got Dissection to thank (hate?) for melodic characteristics in black and death metal music. However I wont bore you on Dissection's unrivaled greatness, because if its not obvious it just proves how truly dense you are.

I think what I enjoy the most about Watain is that they have that big Dissection influence and basically just everything that makes metal great; varied and interesting riffs, various tempo changes and speeds, superb solos, sinister vocals, excellent drumming, incredible atmosphere and catchy memorable lyrics and music that infects your soul and keeps you coming back for more and more. Watain are truly a skilled bunch and unlike most bands they sound like a cohesive unit of hard working dedicated and dynamic musicians that have sworn their souls to the dark.

Even the production is crisp and clean and although some may feel that black metal requires the production qualities of a meat locker with banjos played with toothpicks and ice cream pails with hammers as percussion, Watain lifts a middle finger and laughs in the face of such idiocy. Curiously even as things are clean it by no means sounds like a Dimmu record, it amazingly still sounds black metal the entire way through. This could just be because, again, Watain comes up with some damn clever riffs and they simply know what making great black metal is all about from start to finish.

In the end I guess you either know or you don't. As I already stated I was a late bloomer on the Watain trend wagon or whatever, but as far as I'm concerned this is absolutely supreme music here and you'd have to be, HOLY FUCK is, 'Stellavore' an amazing piece of music! ...Opps, pardon me, having a moment there and really wishing I'd discovered these guys a year earlier so I could have gone to that gig they had around here back in the autumn.

Anyway, I've definitely found a potentially new favorite here and assuming I ever get sick of this record I'll definitely have to try and get my hands on absolutely everything else they've released. Just fantastic, 'Sworn to the Dark' is colossal!