To keep the old flame of Black Metal alive and to go towards in the future are hard things to do separately, and the trial is extremely difficult if you try to do both things simultaneously. It's not easy, because to be in the first model, the band needs to have a raw sound; and in the second, the band needs to improve musically and on the sound quality, which can contradict the first. But there are bands that don't care about the both ways, and thinking in this way, they do both. One of those that won this trial was from Swedish trio WATAIN. After taking five years off since "The Wild Hunt", the wolf gang is back to rip your ears with "Trident Wolf Eclipse".

The album comes to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the band, and it shows that this trio really learned how to become great without losing its musical personality. Their efforts here show a musical work influenced by BATHORY, HELLHAMMER, MAYHEM and DISSECTION (in some parts where lugubrious melodies appears, as heard on "A Throne Below") and some Thrash/Black Metal masters as SODOM and DESTRUCTION. Obviously, it sounds brutal and truly harsh as they do since "Rabid Death's Curse", but you can feel that these 20 years of experience gave the music a more elaborated insight as well.

The sound production made an incredible work, because to mix the raw and brutal musical format of the trio into something that can fit on professional demands from business is not an easy task. But you'll feel exactly in this way, raw and aggressive, but with a very good sound quality, in a way that fits on their musical identity. The art is a tribute to the band's past, because it is once more done on grey, black and white, staying away from colored scenarios that many loves, but wouldn't fit on WATAIN's music.

On "Trident Wolf Eclipse", the band is really in great shape. The nine songs of the album are amazing. But you can bet that the brutal and charming "Nuclear Alchemy" with its very good tempo changes and fine vocals (E. is one of the finest vocalists from the genre), the riff assault imposed by the fast song called "Sacred Damnation", the bitter slow tempos of "Teufelsreich" (very good drumming among the morbid atmosphere that fills the song), the filthy and oppressive guitar riffs of "A Throne Below", the excellent tempo changes and instrumental work shown on "The Fire Power", and the morbid atmosphere of "Antikristis Mirakel" (it seems like a kind of instrumental with narrations coming from a radio).

WATAIN is back to unleash Hell on Earth, so be prepared for their strike.