Rabid Death's Curse

Album review

Considering just how quickly Watain would scale the black metal mountain in the third millennium's first decade, the Swedish group's year 2000 debut, Rabid Death's Curse, couldn't have been more inconspicuous. Hamstrung by a muddy, less-than-ideal production and a slew of familiar Scandinavian B.M. ingredients, the album made virtually no commercial or critical splash upon release. It also suggested that Watain were, at best, content to produce intentionally crude facsimiles of inspirational forefathers ranging from Bathory to Mayhem and, at worst, unable to do anything else. Wrong. Turns out the Swedes were really just finding their feet (or trying on different kinds of shit-kicking footwear, as it were) and, come to think of it, probably exorcising years of cover band habits in the bargain with these undoubtedly derivative, but occasionally insidiously infectious rough drafts. This would certainly explain why the best of the bunch (usually those possessing nefarious circular melodies like "The Limb Crucifiks," "Life Dethroned," and "Walls of Life Ruptured") spend much of their time beating a precious few ideas to death, but make sure they get those across nonetheless. Simply put, Watain's material had yet to cross that fine line between recycling and refreshing the form -- not in the evolutionary sense of progressive-minded bands like Enslaved or Nachtmystium, obviously, but via astonishingly memorable and oftentimes irresistible songs praising black metal's fundamental attributes. In other words, for all its clear failings and detractors, Rabid Death's Curse too fulfills an important function in Watain's career arc, one that the casual listener need never pay heed to, but which loyal fans will likely want to explore at some point in order to better comprehend all that followed.

© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo