Bookended by death metal pioneers Morbid Angel and Incantation, Swedish black metal icons Watain reek of the beast. Blood encrusted, the Uppsala extremists loop through one final leg of promotion for 2018’s Trident Wolf Eclipse, sixth LP in their excoriating canon of satanic incandescence. Building off the controversial expansion of 2013 predecessor The Wild Hunt, the group’s latest album closes out a second take-no-prisoners decade that touched off with 2010 genre landmark and catalog peak Lawless Darkness.: “Each of our albums present quite firmly where things were at the time of their recording, and Lawless Darkness glimmers with the chaos of those years and the lustful exploration thereof,” writes in bandleader Erik Danielsson when pressed to assess what many consider one of the best albums of the 2010s. “It’s also the first album where all the lyrics reached a level that I still to this day consider noble and relevant, which is a sign things were coming together in an ideological sense as well.: “But if I would have known how far I was to go from there, and how much was indeed left to discover, I maybe wouldn’t have been as cocky. I am glad I was, though.”: The genesis of Lawless Darkness proved no less pure.: “At the time, I lived a few hours north of Stockholm in a small cabin surrounded by wilderness, and that’s where I worked on most of the music and lyrics for Lawless. Needless to say it was a quite inspiring place. We also had our headquarters in Stockholm called the Wolf Lair, which was equally inspiring, but on the opposite end of the atmospheric spectrum.: “So it was in those stark contrasts that the album was conceived, which is another crucial reason of why it became what it became.”