Toby Knapp has been making music since he was 19, when he was signed to Shrapnel Records, a label then for throwing a modest amount of bucks at artists who were not known for their technical restraint. "Die Macht von Hassen" is WAXEN's sixth full length album, a black metal foray into the darker side of human existence: the futility of religion as panacea, and humanity as a whole. Like many in the orbit of heavy metal's massive gravitational pull, "Die Macht von Hassen" is a labor of (tainted) love. Knapp's day job is guitar-teacher.  WAXEN is clearly a way to defuse the creative energy that's bottled up as he's teaching kids how to play "Ode to Joy" for the umpteenth time.  But Knapp is putting his money where his guitar playing fingers are, and that's in the studio.  And it seems to be paying off.  It's a confident album that pays homage to the purveyors of black metal, as well as the bands that have taken it to creative heights heretofore unknown.

Opening song "Die Macht Von Hassen" starts with a blast of black metal wind soaring out of the speakers.  At 1:30, it descends into ambient, tremolo-picked chords of anguish over a reverb-drenched, dusty mid-tempo beat. There are no vocals yet.  Throughout the album, Knapp uses his nasally, DARKTHRONE-esque vocals sparingly, letting the listener focus on the music for the most part.  The song has a cool, atmospheric outro similar to what you'd hear on an ENSLAVED or OPETH album.  Second song "God of All Endings" swirls in the glory of blackened DARKTHRONE punk rock. The song heaves and blasts, the energy of a pit circle inhabited by dozens of long-haired lost souls. The rhythm guitar, which gets buried in the mix, does most of the heavy lifting in this song, intricately picked and arranged structures that supply the foundation for Knapp's sonic explorations. The last half-minute of the song is our first introduction to what he can do on the guitar, a quick burst of YNGWIE MALSTEEM histrionics.  And, yes, that Yngwie Malsteem.

As I was listening to the album, I took notes like I usually do. As I struggle to put into narrative what third song "Those Reviled" does, I feel like I'm just going to take the easy way out and post my notes as they are: "Trad black metal/blasts off at 1:00 mark, guitar insanity/sweeps Malsteem like at 2:15. A LOT packed into this song in 5:00 minutes/ great melodic work at the end.  Fantastic song.  Dirty ass darkthrone drums. The Malsteem leads into the black metal shit is outrageous.  You get a good, tight producer/engineer with these, HOLY SHIT. Top notch riff-writing on this one.  Vocals are black-metally weak even by black metal standards.  They don't do anything for me.  I'd would have said fuck it and went to town effects wise.  Turn this shit into the BUTTHOLE SURFERS, then drop down into that sick as shit classic 80s metal riff under the solo.  And that little melodic lick at the end?  FUCK YEAH."  I mean, I'm not going to make that any better by editing the shit out of it am I?  It's black metal, mother fuckers!  Take those sentence fragments in yer pipe and smoke 'em!  Maybe burn down a church with the embers while you're at it.

"Your Kingdom Will Bleed" is this great partnership of dissonant black metal riffing and some triumphantly positive feeling chord progressions. In other words, Knapp creates something that is simultaneously depressive and celebratory at the same time.  This may be because Knapp isn't afraid to go from the malaise of black metal to the fist-pumping, crotch-grabbing stomp of power metal in the span of a song.  Like the previous song, "Your Kingdom Will Bleed" crams a lot of ideas into the eight minutes it almost reaches.  The outro on the song sounds like "Isa"-era ENSLAVED, some dissonant open-note chords that give the song an expressive, full sound. Final song "Holocaust Light" continues with this dissonance coupled with more celebratory, triumphant black metal riffing.  It's the undisputed hit single of the album before it jumps the melodic rails into this flesh-lined pit of self-flagellation.  It's like someone leaned over to Beelzebub and whispered, conspiratorially, I mean, keep the black metal shit, but let's write something they can dance to!

After consistently producing six albums over the past ten years, WAXEN deserves a bit more recognition than they're getting.  Based on these seven songs, it's clearly long overdue.  One can only think with the right production team and some confident marketing, that these songs could be up there with ENSLAVED, KATATONIA and OPETH in terms of flexing those creative black metal muscles.  Like those bands, Knapp has found a unique approach to the genre, while respecting the foundation it was built upon.  The solos are unique and thrilling, majestic and inspiring, and add a layer of complexity to the songs that's hard not to get swept up into. "Die Macht Von Hassen" is a compact beast of a record; Knapp's solos are the sharpened teeth.  Prepare to get mauled!