Rating: 9.3

Country: Sweden

Release Date: 2003

Record Label: Drakkar Productions

Track list:
1.   Devil's Blood   05:49
2.   Black Salvation   06:45   
3.   Opus Dei (The Morbid Angel)   05:33   
4.   Puzzles ov Flesh   05:39   
5.   I Am the Earth   06:00   
6.   The Golden Horns of Darash   05:41   
7.   From the Pulpits of Abomination   06:34   
8.   Casus Luciferi   08:32   

Total playing time   50:33

Band Website: Watain

Watain - Casus Luciferi

Erik Danielsson - Vocals, bass 
Pelle Forsberg - Guitar
H. Jonsson - Drums

Have you ever stuck with something you knew was destined for failure as long as you could? Besides your life, that is. Such has been my relationship with Swedish black metal, in which mediocrity tends to permeate, but bands like Watain are proof that blind volition can pay off. 

Orthodox religious black metal though they may be, Watain principally pledge sonic allegiance to Dissection and De Mysteriis Dom Satanas-era Mayhem, the latter presence being most prominent in Casus Luciferi. Most sentient creatures have learned to expect rather formulaic, one-dimensional music from bands who claim such influences by now, but there's a primordial sense of chaos in these songs' orchestration that, upon closer examination, actually reveals impeccable rhyme and reason. The bass lines often lock into tempestuous grooves over which the discordant tremolo scattershots assume the role of a textural backdrop before furiously blasting back to the center stage, or ascending into an exotic Arckanum or Sacramentum flourish; almost doing for black metal with acerbically controlled dissonance what Morbid Angel did to death metal. Meanwhile, the vocalist may very well be the reincarnation of Per Ohlin (aka Mayhem's Dead). He has a ruthless command of his voice, cutting through the "nyeargh rasp hack" bullshit of black metal vocals and often simply shouting with passion and conviction. Never dabbling in the frosty atmospherics of their Swedish black metal heroes Dissection, all of this is delivered with a ubiquitous sense of urgency not too unlike the controversial chronic blasturbators Marduk, the difference being the fact that the most salient feature of Watain's irate buzz is a sense of tact and grace.

Some of the black metal "elite" will invariably criticize Watain for their continued expedition into the realm of razor-sharp Necromorbus production and trilly Dissection hooks (which are fully manifested in the comparatively poppy Sworn to the Dark, but that's another story), but what these dullards should realize is that well-developed harmonic interplay is not some sort of nonrenewable resource that exhausted itself after Storm of the Light's Bane. Anyone who cares about the one-dimensional duality of "underground vs. mainstream" more than music is lower than a 12 year-old who bookmarks Linkin Park lyrics. Besides, just as the album's undiscriminating penchant for melodicism and accessible motif patterning is balanced with complex dynamics and logic, the mix is cavernous as well as polished, with refreshingly prominent bass and preternaturally aloof vocals.

Watain really seem to like that Satan guy, but they still manage to write some genuinely vivid lyrics without simply stringing together needlessly obtuse Latinate blasphemy. At times the musical narrative almost seems as if written around the unfolding Miltonic prose, like some sort of inverted, vomit-spewing opera. For example, the grooving Celtic Frost bridge in the song "From the Pulpits of Abomination" triggered by the verse "when in deluge thou art fallen, your scriptures are altered, and your doctrines rewritten in blood? What unity in tribes long scattered?" seems to be a sufficient 20 second encapsulation of everything black metal has ever been about, while the increasingly tumultuous hue of "I Am the Earth" doesn't seem like it could exist independently from the author's fatalistic musing. There's no sound on Casus Luciferi that doesn't serve some unwholesome purpose; as much as I have a soft spot for the likes of Deathspell Omega, no amount of tortured time signatures could ever hope to capture that kind of depth.

Like some infernal puzzle or artifact, it's hard to take Casus Luciferi completely seriously, but it's also hard not to be mystified by its arcane implications.

February 29th, 2008