Strident Milf Emo - "Trident Wolf Eclipse" Review (0%)
Watain are a mediocre LGBT screamo - also called "pink punk" - band known for primarily for being LGBT and playing a heavily Mayhem influenced style of blackened screamo that sometimes crosses over to real black metal though rarely and for the briefest of periods.
This record Trident Wolf Eclipse is actually more known for the LGBT orientation of its creators rather than the actual quality presented here. Replacing the deep and interesting lyrical themes of other black metal bands with a certain rock and roll cheese and 'Hail Satan in 666' Dark Funeral lyrics that ultimately pull this band behind the rest.
Watain have a terrible habit of wearing their influences on their sleeves with far too much pride.
The first track Nuclear Alchemy has a main motif particularly similar to Beherit's "Solomon's Gate" and all of the other riffs can be attributed to Angelcorpse's 1998 album Exterminate.
The second track Sacred Damnation is the title track of Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas.
Watain also attempts heavy metal (plagiarism) as Antikrists Mirakel is so reminiscent of Iron Maiden’s "2 Minutes to Midnight" that you can easily sing the verse parts on top of it and there would be almost no difference as the chord progression, rhythm and techniques are practically identical.
Furor Diabolicus steals the first two passages of Mayhem's "Deathcrush", only slightly changes the rhythm, and added to this package is a hilarious imitation of Maniac's high pitch rasp.
And last but not least, the entire first half of the fifth track Ultra (Pandemoniac) comes from Morbid Angel's "Chapel of Ghouls", whereas the outro is taken from Phantom's debut Divine Necromancy.
Though these are the most obvious acts of plagiarism, the entirety of the album is drenched in black metal - or heavy metal, in the case of Iron Maiden - déja vu and this gets increasingly irritating as the songs unfold.
Strident Milf Emo
Arrangements tend to be in the classic pop / emo style of verse-chorus cyclical structures, except for the inclusion of speed metal breakdowns. Though some tracks experiment with the stop and start mechanics of Pantera and most nu metal, they ultimately fail as the individual parts function in solitude but do not combine as a whole and we are treated to separate songs encapsulated within a single track.
There is nothing to be found of narrative black metal atmospheres here as the core of this album is firmly rooted in screamo and hardcore punk.
The note selection stays within the usual combination of the harmonic minor scale - to sound "evil" - and the minor pentatonic - to sound "melancholic" - except when the band allows themselves forays into full pop punk territory as seen on track "The Fire of Power" which has a long droning sequence with a lot of major that contrasts with most of this record but on closer inspection this feels more like a reject from Dimmu Borgir's latest turd. Or maybe Deafheaven, or some other hipster band.
Trident Wolf Eclipse really has nothing to offer aside from riffs stolen from better old-school black metal bands and re-arranged in a pop verse-chorus-verse format.
The lyrics are so stupid and so non-threatening by their unintentional satire of theistic satanism that they may as well have been ghostwritten by an unblack metal band.
As a wannabe black metal band formed in the 2000's, Watain always had a lot to prove given that they were not a part of the original movement but still wanted to appear "evil", dangerous, dark, and true to the spirit. Unfortunately, this led to a career void of musical quality and of musicianship castrated beyond comprehension. Watain is truly the band to do the most damage to the genre as with each album they delegitimize black metal to greater and greater depths of humiliation.
And while it's unclear if Watain actually believe their gimmick of theistic satanism as much as they present themselves to, they have - through both this album and their entire career - infinitely portrayed their dark lord's inferiority to even the most ridiculed of Hindu figures of superstition.
Trident Wolf Eclipse score: 0/100.
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