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Watain - Lawless Darkness

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 June 14 2010 at 05:20:15 AM



“Am I Evulllll?” Who cares?

With the coming of their new album Lawless Darkness, released just one week after completing  another, minorly controversial appearance at this year’s Maryland Deathfest, Watain prove once again successful in rousing even cynical American audiences with their feculent, death-covered spectacle.

After so many public appearances one would think the group's sincerity, no matter how many cracks appeared in their too human facade, would at this point be non-debatable. Yet only the band’s growing popularity can properly explain the apparent shock to some that Watain, in the minds of its founders, is more than mere on-stage performance; that “performance,” for them, is too mundane a word for it.

The opposing view that no one could or should be so serious about anything as trivial as Black Metal, nevertheless validates Watain’s mission. Either one has managed to disregard their extremest ideals in favor of aesthetics for a half-hour of thrills, regard it only as a front, or see them as so repugnant as to question one's support for such odious villains in the first place.

I’m convinced of their being convinced. Less so of the idea that a recent uproar is based more on the unproven substance of frontman Erik Danielsson’s remarks than the implications for listeners were they indeed true.

But while moralists wait to pounce on Danielsson with questions of “baby-rape,” they overlook the already repeated approval of murder, torture and humiliation carried out by vast catalog of individuals and governments. For those now striking a moral pose, if you haven't already found something offensive to complain about the band up till now, that's your own problem.

At any rate, the question was answered before:

Just look around you! Our master have worked his way through religion since ages, isn’t that obvious? Who can deny the ineffable splendor of the holy Christ? The holy outbursts of goodness deformed into luciferian madness. The holy inquisition whose inhuman, sadistic urges and genocides blended in magnificently with their quest to deprive the world from sin in the name of God. Hitler, the great visionary whose good hearted vision of a new and better world discharged into a wonderfull overflow of deadly hybris and a world in flames! The god fearing monks of the catholic church who couldn’t resist the temptation of Satan as he placed these innocent little boys before their lustful hands. The knights of the half moon who in the name of their God engulfs the entire world in suspicion and ill will through acts of terror…Treacherous it is, the ageless ouroborus, with it’s bittersweet offerings to a world in hunger…

My belief is not a part of the Judeo-christianity pattern, but the other way around. Just as a bricklayer need to shape his stones in order to build his wall, so does the Lord place the mosques, the churches and the synagogues on each other, to build His own temple of the earth, where His voice is speaking through each and all of them.

-Strength Through War zine, 2005.

The problem then, for those willing to stick around, should be how the implications of Danielsson and his cohorts being Satanists first, musicians second, have unfortunately been realized with the quality and ferocity of their work becoming less with each new release. That only those blinded by hype and sharing the same delusion that factory-produced personalized occult paraphernalia counts as restoring the myth of a “tradition” rather than exposing its every fault and weakness.

The longer Watain continues the more each release increasingly relies on association, interpretation and most importantly, as evidenced by the recent covers of Decibel and Terrorizer, low lighting as the source of their diminishing power.

Strip away the sharp, Dürer-quality work by Polish artist, Zbigniew Bielak – stylistically opposite Timo Ketola’s illustrations nearly oozing off the pages of Sworn to the Dark – and what’s left are mostly longwinded and tiresome renovations. All five minutes of opener, “Death’s Cold Dark,” are inconsequential enough to say the album doesn’t even properly exist until the start of its next and best track, “Malfeitor.” The album’s first single, “Reaping Death,” is generic Armageddon ra-ra-ra; A leaden nine minutes of evil semi-tones on “Wolves Curse” ends appropriately with crickets chirping and “Kiss of Death” serves as simple reminder of how much better are The Chasm at riffing off Dissection.

More captivating are the instrumental title track, followed by “Hymn to Qayin,” at least showing that Watain haven’t completely given up crafting more dramatic material after “Stellavore.” But even with these rounding out the album’s strongest tracks it isn’t enough to even out the ratio.

It’s not terrible, see, so much as it’s just fucking whatever. Easy to be sold on one’s own over-confidence when “the world” deemed conquered only pretends to care. Perhaps in time Watain will overcome that naivety or maybe Danielsson finally “frees" himself before the day he lines up with Glen Benton to purchase a new dialyses machine. Either way, victory by default just ain’t enough anymore, boys. Hell’s heard better.

[Todd DePalma]

Watain
Lawless Darkness
2009
Season of Mist

Comments (16)

  • 47 comments
    Helm
    4:36 PM on Jun 14, 2010 // reply »
    Lucid and well written.

    As an outside point I think the 'moralists versus those willing to stick around' duality marginalizes various viewpoints that do not fit the scheme.

    I, for one, don't begrudge Watain for their beliefs or desires and how they are manifested in their art. I've heard - and was affected - by far more severe cosmology than 'the devil's work is everywhere and I relish it'. I am neither horrified nor scandalized.

    The problem with Watain (and bands like Watain) is that they're spending too much time on getting their alibi airtight. What might attract others to otherness is space of interpretation, the poetry of a different worldview made manifest, not hard certainties, certainly not preaching. Watain would be more effective if they just put out records.

    The rest is to the detriment of their music, the dialogue around their art and (probably) of their own goals as well how they're going about explaining themselves constantly. They're not making themselves understood, they're just encouraging further doubt by hammering entry-level satanism into every space of the Watain entity. It's just dry, they're trying too hard and it just begs the question why.

    I understand the reflex. Anyone who paid attention to the '00s in metal can understand the desire for a stronger case for romantic metal. It seems in the last few years we're seeing the results of those that took up that flag and it's looking like an intellectual dead-end. I guess metal can't just pretend modernity never happened after all!
  • 36 comments
    DePalma
    7:02 AM on Jun 15, 2010 // reply »
    "I guess metal can't just pretend modernity never happened after all!"

    I wouldn't want or expect for everyone to engage that problem directly, but those that have will likely still be looked upon as having done something great with their art in these times.

    There are worse offenders out there, sure. I think of To The Nameless Dead, what a gift it was, and then how many more Graveland records will be released in my lifetime...
  • 47 comments
    Helm
    10:01 AM on Jun 15, 2010 // reply »
    I agree with what you say.

    Also I was thinking, some of the uproar by commentators on Watain is not due to their sensitive middle-class morals going on red alert. I think it's because they're over twenty years old and they've gone to the outside world and it has matured them to the point where they can spot an unworkable belief set when they read one. I don't think many people are saying 'these Watain, they're *bad people*' as much as they're pointing out that most people can't really live like Watain suggest they do.

    It's only a stone's throw from there to wondering if Watain are saying the truth about how they live and although I'd rather not throw stones, I can understand why most others, trained to smell hypocrisy by the modern world, do. One meets many more hypocrites in life than developmentally and psychologically malfunctioning sociopaths.

    My heart belongs to the romance, I can never forget how Heavy Metal mutated me, I will always look with awe towards the entity behind its dreadful inspiration. That much about Watain I can sympathize with. But if romanticism is my teenager years then a more nuanced world-view where *ghasp!* other people exist had to develop as I grew older and became less sheltered. Most go through their own post-Enlightenment romanticism, their world wars and their modernism periods and I do believe Heavy Metal can be made where all those factors of emotional development are accounted for. Primordial, whom, you mention are a good example, there are others.
  • 67 comments
    chauncey chomperz
    11:27 AM on Jun 15, 2010 // reply »
    Watain would be more effective if they just put out records.

    The rest is to the detriment of their music, the dialogue around their art and (probably) of their own goals as well how they're going about explaining themselves constantly.

    this is it right here, the crux of it for me. I don't begrudge Watain any of their beliefs or any of that. but the constant talking and explaining over and over does seem to dilute whatever mystique they worked hard to cultivate. every interview chips away at that mystique and only further relegates them to the flawed/too human corner. I imagine its a dicey balancing act between promoting your ideas and increasing exposure for your band...but Satanic bands do themselves no favors talking to Stereogum and trying to explain their beliefs to skeptical indie rockers. or talking to Decibel and trying to explain their beliefs to skeptical metal heads for that matter.
  • 36 comments
    DePalma
    9:25 PM on Jun 15, 2010 // reply »
    "I don't think many people are saying 'these Watain, they're *bad people*' as much as they're pointing out that most people can't really live like Watain suggest they do."

    This is where things get blown up, because Watain suggests next to nothing you wouldn't already assume of full-time, touring musicians.

    A rock band breaking the law, doing "bad things". How novel to trade off the obvious! Tell us more...

    But when other musicians, say Kerry King, claim they would be in jail or something if they weren't playing music and letting out their violent impulses, when people look back on Watain's comments they think they've heard the worst of it.

    But I don't see what's "unworkable" about giving less material, more vocal support to "indefensible" acts or perpetrators of those acts as Watain do in almost every interview, which seems to equally get under people's skin.

    It's working pretty goddamn well, actually.

    Maybe the red flag should have been Erik saying he didn't like Manowar. Because I doubt there's a law some NY slimebags didn't already break before the juniors could say "libertine."






  • 6 comments
    UA
    9:11 PM on Jun 15, 2010 // reply »
    Fuck this band.
  • 47 comments
    Helm
    9:21 PM on Jun 15, 2010 // reply »
    Uh I don't think the unworkable part about Watain is them taking drugs, roughing up some guy that plays in D.R.I. or having sex with jailbait groupies. Or whatever it is that touring musicians 'breaking the law' do. It's presenting these 'bad things' as in keeping with a satanic ethos, one which they maintain full-time, one which defines every waking action of theirs.

    An ideology, ideas in general, are much simpler and pettier schemes than a human being. A human being that says they're an idea is therefore, less than human. Watain are trying very hard to become the embodiment of an idea ('satanic black metal') and as I said, a person with life experience and an open mind might spot that as a fool's errand.
  • 19 comments
    Doomstoned
    6:45 AM on Jun 16, 2010 // reply »
    For any "true believers" still holding out, have good a look at the following sickeningly normal, well-adjusted link:

    http://www.facebook.com/people/Erik-Danielsson/609249223?ref=search

    There's nothing fucking sinister or evil about this straight-laced, square-ass, normopathic Facebook bullshit.

    "I can tell by their eyes
    They're just a bunch of fucking
    Unaware squares.."


  • 19 comments
    K.
    4:30 PM on Jun 16, 2010 // reply »
    The thing that annoys me most on Watain today is that they are trying to hard to show everybody "yes we know it all, we are Satan to the core" or whatever...But it would be far more wiser to just hint the veiled secrets and let the listener research for himself the secrets hidden in the dark rather then throw the bloody slab of raw meat before the dull masses. What does it bring them? Articles like this one: http://www.antihumanism.com/2010/06/scooby-doo-and-the-watain-mystery/
    And to Helm - "I think it's because they're over twenty years old and they've gone to the outside world and it has matured them to the point where they can spot an unworkable belief set when they read one. I don't think many people are saying 'these Watain, they're *bad people*' as much as they're pointing out that most people can't really live like Watain suggest they do."- have you tried any of the stuff Watain mentions to claim it does not work? It may not work for you but isn't your skepticism only built on a lack of experience with such stuff? And do you believe that loosing your beliefs in things "beyond" is a matter of "maturing"? I know occultists over 50 years of age who know very well what they are doing and why they are doing it. Watain presents this "unworkable system" in a very flashy way to make their lyrics appear "brutal and dark"and that is the main problem I think. It's like reading the book Panparadox by the Arckanum guy - he wants everything to appear sinister and brutal but with each read line you are more and more sure that this fellow has a very long way to walk before he can write books about magick.
  • 47 comments
    Helm
    7:19 PM on Jun 16, 2010 // reply »
    All my beliefs could be said to be beliefs in things "beyond". My hope is not metaphysical in its conceit but is metaphysical as a desire. What tells me that things will be all-right and that I will find my place in life and that the story will make sense? Nothing. There's nothing to suggest anything good will happen, yet I believe it and I persue it, irrationally and selfishly. I do not need systematized faith to hope, but my hopes are similar to those that embellish them with systems.

    My experiences with breaking the law are in my adolescence. I did not get very many positive returns from them, if I had I might have become a very different person. In any case they did satisfy curiosities and urges. Not to say that I'm done with those urges, but there are other means, artistic and stochastic, to pursue them. I don't need to beat up D.R.I. to enforce my worldview.

    I did not mean to imply occultism is immature, only that those that try to use any ideological system as a full and enveloping personal identity, might be.
  • 5 comments
    magoose
    10:26 PM on Jun 16, 2010 // reply »
    "Perhaps in time Watain will overcome that naivety or maybe Danielsson finally frees" himself before the day he lines up with Glen Benton to purchase a new dialyses machine." now that line's a keeper. thanks also for the zine scan. the clandestine blaze interview reminds me of how a genuinely underground project sounds on "paper."
  • 19 comments
    K.
    11:42 PM on Jun 16, 2010 // reply »
    Helm - your last sentence says it all. The path to Nod is long and thorny - I know because I walk it for many years. And it's not about keeping someones strict rules but to break them and create your own. All the occult systems are just hints and road marks but it is the man who has to find his own way to walk them. Once the "occult logic" is understood basically anything can work for you.
    Watain are only poster boys for nowadays Black Metal. I do not know any of them personally nor have I spoken with them. But I have spoken to the people of the TOTBL and they are very intelligent people who don't want to have anything to do with music or anything outside their doings.
  • 47 comments
    Helm
    12:38 AM on Jun 17, 2010 // reply »
    K, good luck with your aspirations and hopes. A final question, what do the initials TOTBL stand for, do they partain to the topic or are you mentioning that group as a personal aside?

    Thank you for the dialogue.
  • 19 comments
    K.
    12:06 AM on Jun 18, 2010 // reply »
    Thank you Helm. It's Temple of the Black Light. Many of the Watain lyrics draw from their teachings. It is the organization of which Nodtveidt was also a member.
    The pleasure was on my side.
  • 8 comments
    Reginald Gillette
    2:05 AM on Jun 20, 2010 // reply »
    TOTBL...GOSH, I thought you were talking about Interpol "Turn On the Bright Lights".

    Would be a fitting parallel still; another band who was once mysterious and dark, and then talked too much (and made progressively weaker albums).
  • 1 comment
    Hank
    1:40 PM on Jun 26, 2010 // reply »
    Well written DePalma. Yet, I do not agree that Watain progressively made weaker albums.
 

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