Review Summary: Salty.
Watain have always seemed like a very promising band to me. I enjoy all of their records except for 2007’s Sworn to the Dark, even though I found pretty much every single one of them to be some kind of mixed affair in one way or another. I never have been able to join the fanboys who praise and worship them as the second coming of Black Metal, nor have I been able to relate to the more critical side of the reactions who blame Watain for releasing albums of pure boredom and staleness. Whereas I always have liked Watain’s music, I also don’t think that they have released anything that deserves the status of a classic or a flawless album. Sadly, their newest output The Wild Hunt also does not showcase a band being at the total peak of their game, in spite of some healthy experimentation being present.
At a certain point in „All That May Bleed“ you hear Erik Danielsson loudly proclaim: „The salt of Satan in the wounds of Christ!“ Strangely enough, this pretty much describes the feeling this album leaves behind: It feels salty. Sometimes the amount of salt is just right to set them apart from other Black Metal bands and sometimes it feels like the amount of salt was miscalculated. In other words: It seems like a special album, an important one for Watain, maybe even a transitional one, but at the same time it feels somewhat lacking in certain sections and not thought-out all too well concerning some aspects.
While Lawless Darkness threw you into cold water pretty much straight away, with blastbeats and fast riffing in „Death’s Cold Dark“, the opener of this album, „Night Vision“, is a far more subdued beginning to a Black Metal Album, being a lengthy instrumental track that starts to open up halfway through. After that, „De Profundis“ kicks in with quite a cool opening riff and people who know Watain’s music will feel right at home, as this one is fast and abrasive, just as usual. With that being said, not everything about this album is „just as usual“. In fact, many things are different: „They Rode On“ is a half-ballad, featuring only clean vocals and also big parts of it are acoustic, the title track sees Watain peeking into Bathory’s direction and Quorthon’s brand of epic Black Metal, „Outlaw“ features tribal elements and they use a multitude of effects in the „De Profundis“.
I am a big fan of the epic approach and I also am not disinclined to experimentation but some things just seem a little bit off on this album. While I consider „They Rode On“ to be a thoroughly well-made track, with Danielsson delivering quite an atmospheric brand of clean vocals, albeit not being among the better clean vocalists of the genre, most of the experimentation is just not as elaborate as it could have been. The effects in „De Profundis“ are not at all advantageous for the song - in fact I find them to be quite disturbing, even though „De Profundis“ is one of the better plain Black Metal tracks of the album –, the tribal elements in „Outlaw“ seem as if they were just carelessly thrown in there to make the song more interesting and overall the songs just appear to lack tension. The title track also is one of the more successful attempts at experimentation, but if they had made it just a tiny bit shorter and incorporated some more memorable riffs it would be really great, right now it’s just good. The last track, „Holocaust Dawn“, is far better in my honest opinion with more concise songwriting.
Speaking of riffs, that’s something the album also shows lack of: Memorable riffs. The opening riffs of „De Profundis“ and „All That May Bleed“ are pretty much the only ones that come to mind and even though „The Child Must Die“ features some very Dissection-esque riffage, it never even comes close to Nödtveidt’s genius. In fact, this is probably the worst track on the album, since it is stale and it does not really seem to know where it wants to head. „The Child Must Die“, „Sleepless Evil“ and the second instrumental „Ignem Veni Mittere“ all feel kind of unnecessary and appear to be mostly filler and „Black Flames March“ drags on for too long, even thought it’s a good song, apart from the chorus, which seems a little bloodless to me.
This sounds like I wouldn’t like the album, which is not true. The tracks are mostly solid, some are bad and some are great, I just feel a little bit disappointed because it’s nowhere as good as it could have been. If they manage to expand the experimentation, sporting more concise songwriting and a more focused approach and if they manage to make the traditional Black Metal parts more interesting, more abrasive, punishing and intense and write better and more memorable riffs next time, then I’m sure we’ll be in for one hell of an album. I just think that it’s a real shame that the band still doesn’t live up to it’s own potential, even though they continued down the path of broadening their sound, which I think is one of the best choices a band can make. Better luck next time Watain, this album might not be as bad as all the critics want it to be, but it’s also not a milestone or a very good album. It’s just good and a tadbit unspectacular from time to time.
