96 Lafayette St. 7 p.m. $16. (With Goatwhore, Black Anvil and Hamsoken.)
As black metal evolves into newer and weirder sonic and thematic terrains, Sweden’s fearsome and amazing Watain continue to toil in the same poisoned ground from which the music first grew. The band offers swirling, suffocating, hook-driven black metal that draws from the very best in the genre’s history—Dissection, Immortal, Morbid Angel—with lyrics focusing on rituals, witches, devils and demons the likes of which even Euronymous himself would approve. Their new album, Lawless Darkness, is one of 2010’s great highlights, spilling over with relentless, magnificent, horrifying anthems of nether realms and the black arts. Live, the band is famous for two things: (1) ruling on the level of metal’s all-time greats; and (2) filling the stage with the corpses of sacrificial pigs and drenching the crowd in goat’s blood. So: (1) Don’t miss ’em; and (2) wear a smock.
Watain perform “Legions of the Black Light” at Hellfest 2010
Review: Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit
Interview: Thomas Gabriel Fischer, aka Tom G. Warrior, of Triptykon, Celtic Frost and Hellhammer
