Sweden’s Watain have produced the best black/death metal album I’ve heard since the mid 90s. There, I’ve said it.

Of course, I won’t pretend it topples classics such as Dissection’s “Storm of the Lights Bane” or “Somberlain,” but it follows brightly in their paths. Besides melodic Swedish death metal, the hybrid of black/death metal is probably one of the most over populated metal genres in the past decade. There are literally too many bands who strove to mimic or recreate the template which Dissection designed. Unfortunately 99% of these bands failed to create anything inspiring, or even interesting and caused (in my eyes) the scene to swallow itself in sea of mediocrity.