Watain - The Wild Hunt [Colored Vinyl]

Watain are Swedish black metal band from Uppsala, formed in 1998. The Wild Hunt, originally released in August of 2013, it's the most important album of their career. Unique. And ambitious. It put them in a league of their own and emancipated beyond their genre peers. With mixing duties handled by the faithful Tore Stjerna at the famous Necromorbus studio in Alvik (Sweden), "The Wild Hunt" marks another gigantic achievement and most importantly once again ups the ante compared to WATAIN's extremely well received previous releases. By far, it is their most diverse record to date and vocalist E. is adamant about "each album bringing a story on its own. There's never been a question of continuing wherever we ended with the previous one." So if to some the opening instrumental 'Night Vision' picks up nicely where 'Waters of Ain' left off on "Lawless Darkness" and the album's first single 'All That May Bleed' has classic WATAIN written all over the place, these eleven songs offer plenty of devilish surprises. The trio (rounded up by P. on strings and H. on drums) has never ever compromised their sound nor their vision to "mainstream black metal" and "The Wild Hunt" is another vivid proof of that. This sonic and lyrical tour-de-force explores the band's classic roots like Bathory or Dissection ("being quite a retrospective record, that record is permeated by things that meant a lot to us in the past so no reason to try to hide them") while also being truly their own. And who else than WATAIN could have come up with such an intimate song like 'They Rode On' where for the first time they dare using clean vocals? "I piss on those so-called artists who adapt themselves in order to reach bigger audiences. The main reason why we achieved all that we did is that we never betrayed our initial vision, not because we ever pretended to write more 'accessible' music. That specific song is just us being brutally personal and honest. It shows another important facet of the WATAIN world.