This bitter slab is as cold and dark as an abandoned castle, as depressing as identifying your loved one's body at the morgue and as spiteful as Lucifer's wrath towards god .Opening rather ominously and bleak, like the ossuary lid is finally closing on you for all eternity, the foul ones launch headlong into "Death's Cold Dark" a composite of wretched melodic excess juxtaposed with a royally distorted blood frenzy that radiates all the warmth of a crypt. Listen attentively for some interesting chord changes that permeate the chorus. “Wolves Curse" is a moonlit homage to the lycanthrope legions of the forest, eternally baying for flesh and blood but forever alone. I envision our endangered brethren's razor canines cutting into the throats of hunters, justifying their rights to the lands of shrouded mystery. A beautifully satanic tribute to thy canis lupus divine.

Where "Sworn To The Dark" embraced technicality and modernistic structure "Lawless Darkness" caters to the old guard yet in a forward thinking way. One selection I quite detested upon initial exposure was "Total Funeral" but with repeated observation I hasten to admit this is leaps and bounds the catchiest song (but hooks don't necessitate superiority above any other music on offer) and it will have you lung regurgitating in short order. Informed veterans will spy blatant homage's (or veritable rip offs) to METALLICA's "Call Of Chthulu" and CELTIC FROST's "Jewel Throne" as well as a unique ode to (gasp!) gothic metal courtesy of FIELDS OF THE NEPHILLIM Carl McCoy-personally invited by E to add his shadowed necrotic nuances to "Waters Of Ain" an epic about the journey set forth upon by the Satanist after death.

It’s all clandestine stuff and the Devil's tenacious house band even contributes a majestic instrumental owing to the namesake of the album. Written on defrocked parchment with rotten pig’s blood and permeated with the rank scent of acrid flesh WATAIN means business, and this offering is nothing if not a love letter to Old Nick himself.