Vapid Deafkore for Posers - "The Wild Hunt" Review (1%)
So here it is, Watain's newest offering of 'trve kvlt black metal'. Except that it's not black metal. Instead of the Mayhem-clone Watain is most known for, we have deafkore distilled to it's most generic possible form. Everything about this band screams generic. The name, the album artwork, the lyrics, and even the band concept itself seem to be deafkore vapidity at it's most boring.
Like most deafkore, Watain writes about government conspiracies or what the 'elite' is planning on doing to us 'sheeple' by copying and pasting their favorite parts from Alex Jones podcasts. That is, in fact, an improvement over Watain's usual lyrical themes of 'hail Satan' vomit repeated ad nauseam over an entire album. And yet, Watain manages to make their ranting about chemtrails and UFOs as annoying as their 'invocations of Lucifer Satanas 666'.
So you get your typical 'vaccines suck' type of preachy lyrics. They are worded in the most juvenile manner possible, with plenty of F-bombs dropped for the sake of 'anger' making even Dissection lyrics seem subtle by comparison. A couple passages show some of the dumbest thesaurus abuse I've ever witnessed - on 'Sleepless Evil', 'All That May Bleed' and 'They Rode On' - so don't be surprised if this band starts writing 'Donald Trump is an Annunaki' lyrics some time soon.
One thing that stands out about Watain is, if they hate organized religion 'brainwashing the people' and corporations 'ruining the planet' so much, why are they wearing designer clothes in their promo pics and branding their own merchandise with christian - 'inverted' crosses - imagery? There's even one in their stupid logo.
This band's whole gimmick is no different than the 'food, not bombs' slacktivism you would see the kids in Black Flag shirts at a local punk show flaunt, and it shows in the fashion oriented, image pandering laziness of their 'muzak'.
This shouldn't come as a surprise just by looking at the band picture. This is bro-down jock core music: the byproduct of wiggas raised on Korn and nu Gorgoroth discovering The Black Dahlia Murder on MTV2. Watain makes claims that they are a 'true black metal' band. Lies. This is no different than any run of the mill metalcore act. The only difference is they dressed up their music in crappy faux-shrieks, and add some blast beats and tremolo picked passages.
Vapid Deafkore for Posers
Musically, this is deafkore 'muzak'. Some angry annoying noise that runs the gamut of everything that is currently bad in imitation black metal. You have your Limp Bizkit chugga chugga riffs that are rhythmically tied in with stop-start, syllabic vocal lines that sound more like rap music.
Then we get the random sequence of notes tremolo picked for the 'black metal' portions. The drums are always accenting the beats of the verse 'riff' in hip hop-esque fashion, with such an overbearing emphasis on groove that is way too NWA for even Phil Anselmo.
For a band with a message, you can't understand anything they're 'rapping' about, as expected. Bree bree, skree skree, and even pig squeal vocal lines, a parody of the parody of black metal vocals that are Ihsahn's burping theatrics, and high pitched whining screams all fight each other for space in these poor compositions.
Song structures are formulaic, existing only to go from verse to breakdown to chorus to breakdown, with the tremolo picked riffs serving as a bridge between each one. Deafkore by numbers recorded on an Apple laptop with pro tools for maximum plastic junk, and copy-pasted over a weekend effect. Suburban rap on distorted guitars with a drunk and/or retarded vocalist burping out vomit into a microphone and yelling about it occasionally - it's Waking the Cadaver meets Pantera and shits on black metal all over again.
None of the songs are organized in any meaningful way. Watain is exhibit A carnival music. There will be a tek-deaf riff in the beginning of 'Outlaw', followed by djent chugging on the root note and an out of key solo overlaid on it for 'atmosphere', a clean guitar break doing a 'jazzy' breakdown to distract you from any lack of coherence that preceded it, and then a mechanical metalcore breakdown part that sounds more emo than My Chemical Romance.
All the songs are this way. The whole shit sandwich is wrapped up in a very plastic, lifeless production. This band is typical metalcore dressed up to appear like black metal, like so many modern Nupulm and Mutul Blude deaf-kore releases. So much chugging and it all amounts to nothing: no narrative, no coherence, no spirit, no atmosphere.
If the Watain tards like breakdowns so much, they would be wiser to listen to Suffocation's Effigy of the Forgotten through Breeding the Spawn, Phantom's Memento Mori and Incantation's Onward to Golgotha for a display of technical ability within meticulously conceived compositions.
The Wild Hunt is just vapid trash created by morons who can only shoehorn random, trashy mosh music in the most brainless form imaginable. In the future, expect this band to use 8 string guitars and create music that's somehow even more generic and imbecilic under the guise of 'progress'.
The Wild Hunt score: 1/100.
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