Toothless Trailerparkness (Nu Metal) - "Lawless Darkness" Review (0%)
Those Swedes are starting to really piss me off. First they bring us the Gaythenburg sound which ruined the careers of such promising bands as At the Gates and Dissection, and now there's this nu metal offshoot which threatens to ruin the careers of promising bands such as Wat-... lel.
A few more chugging riffs, and a lot more teenage angst and faux aggression, but in general just as utterly boring as In Flames. Oh yeah, there's some dumbed down Opeth - itself a dumbed down Atheist, which is in turn dumbed down death metal - too, which deserves its own circle of Hell. The main band of that genre is The Haunted, and then there are the slightly more chugga versions like Watain.
When did chugga become an adjective? When did Watain become black metal? Is the drummer really playing with Erik Danielsson's dildos or just incompetent? Why does screamo never admit to being screamo? Is that a Warkvlt riff? "Let's find out".
Yes, Lawless Darkness has black metal vocals... however they are of the boring new kind - see also nu Enslaved and the like - and in general this is a very uninteresting album. There's also just a bit too much crappy Swedish melodef/metalcore to be found here - see that brilliant "breakdown" in the second song around 2:40.
We start with "Dead's Cold Dick" or whatever the first song is called - it's a Mayhem ripoff with a really shitty interlude. The second song "Malfeikorn" is a bit more solid overall as it comes from Demonecromancy's Fallen from the Brightest Throne instead of Mayhem, but the thing is, by then the formula is starting to wear thin. Ironically, when they play fast they are an okay but boring metalcore cover band - it's when they slow down that the laughable nu metal shines through.
The chorus of "Rapping Death" for example, in all of its Slipknot inspired nu metal glory. There's an Exodus-lifted speed metal riff to be found in that song, which makes it almost halfway decent despite being so derivative that it's been used by everyone and their grandmother, including Metallica. If post-Ride the Lightning Metallica uses it, you know it's a tired and derivative riff. Even Watain realizes that, which is why it's used only twice before being retired as the whole song turns into the same chugging garbage that was on MTV in the early 00s. Which is exactly when - and how - Watain started their "black metal" career... curious.
Toothless Trailerparkness (Nu Metal)
"Prince of Persia: The Four Thrones" takes a while to get going before it turns into the usual chugga chugga bullshit. Ironically - or not - this song manages to be even more mallcorish than Stuart Chatwood's Ubisoft era Prince of Persia soundtrack. See, Watain isn't just a Korn cover band pretending to be black metal... they are also a (shitty) video game cover band pretending to be original musicians, as evidenced by the two following albums The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (lel) and Try-Hard Wolfenstein: The Nu Eclipse (as cringe as the source material).
"Wolves in the Throne Room but even Worse" - now there's an okay intro riff, maybe because it was taken from Neraines' Yggdrasil? I also had "Worthless (Imitation) Neraines" as a fallback review title. Then, it just turns into the same old Korn shit. Lawless Darkness makes Devourment type "br00tal" death sound like the epitome of variety and cleverness, which is easy when you're being compared to Watain I guess.
They throw in a treble heavy post rock passage before a more chugging on title track. A dumb interlude follows... am I the only one that hates that style of vocal distortion? Dimmu Borgir seems to have fallen into deep butt-love with the idea, and Gaygoroth's latest turd also has this tendency. Yeah, that's another thing that this album sounds like: nu Gorgoroth. Though even they are better than this pile of shit, the vocal ideas tend to passed around than used condoms on Watain's tour bus.
"Total War: Sweden's Funeral" is a silly groove track, a bit slower than the previous stuff, and really would not be out of place on Pantera, Limp Bizkit or the first Machine Head album. A breakdown in the middle carries that part of the song, like a caravan through a trailer park, but the rest of it is pretty bad.
"Hymn to Qayin" tries and fails to be Slaughter of the Soul. The lyrics are an abomination. Qayin is Hebrew (lel) for Cain (קין), the son of Adam and an altar boy Eve from the book of Genesis. These include "Mighty master Qayin / Father of the Bloodline / Bringer of the black light / I bask in your halo of glory and might / Thorn-crowned master, his scythe smites all my enemies". At this point it would be akin to beating on a dead horse, but I'd like to draw your attention to the utterly TRANSPARENT attempts by the literal cuckold band Watain to introduce Judeo-Christian mythology - under the guise of "opposing" it of course, because nothing screams transgression as loud as repeating "Mighty master Qayin, guide my hand / For my deeds are thine / Firstborn of the Black Light / Lord of the Shadows of Death" - into black metal, a genre known specifically for its focus on Scandinavian / Germanic / Norse / Celtic / European - i.e. not the "book of Genesis" - mythology as a basis for its lyrical themes. Even the Immortal clowns get it. It's only ever the "satanic" - i.e. Christian - turd bands like Watain, Dark Funeral, later Dissection, Antekhrist, Archgoat, later Gorgoroth that don't understand - or pretend not to understand - why screaming "Hail Satan" while bending over and dropping to your knees "inside a pentagram" don't make you any less Christian than the average altar boy with a cum-stained dalmatics, a trait also shared by members of Watain.
"Gargling the Piss of Deathcore" is pretty much representative of the entire album, in that it's a completely worthless deathcore / rap rock hybrid that goes nowhere, and just an excuse to introduce (even more) homoerotic lyrics such as "Kiss of Death! / Lips envenomed / Devil's breath against my neck / Eager and fearless shall I receive the final touch". Even Gaahl would have hesitated before publishing this, not Watain.
The final track "Waters of Anal Pain" is a very generic post rock, almost fifteen minutes long turd. Didn't I hear something like this on the first Deafheaven album, only with better leads that time? It goes into the forced nu metal Machine Head/Chaos AD chugging sound for the "hard" verses and then into a more traditional My Chemical Romance post-rock drone for the "soft" choruses.
So what we have here is a very average trailer park nu metal album that wears an very thin veneer of black metal aesthetics, increasingly frequently absent - like Erik Danielsson's father - so that by the end of the album there's absolutely no doubt as to the pathetic nu metal nature of Lawless Darkness.
If you like this new Swedish sound - complete with lyrics about showing how you're TOTALLY opposed to Christianity by quoting the Bible a lot, and throwing around references only (other) Christian fundamentalists can get - this is right up your alley.
Hail the Lawless Darkness of Trailer Park Satan!
The Black Light of Cain will devour you unless you worship the fictional characters from the same Middle-Eastern fairy tale I pretend to oppose!!!!
Lawless Darkness score: 0/100.
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