WATAIN Hope To Accomplish "World War III" On New Record
January 26, 2007, 17 years ago
WATAIN frontman/bassist Erik Danielsson spoke to MTV.com about a number of topics including their forthcoming album Sworn To The Dark, due out April 17th via Season Of Mist.
The Swedish black metallers started working on the album three years ago during what was an "extremely intense period in the history of Watain."
"We're trying to take away the superfluous parts, in favor of a more easily approachable feeling of the whole album," the frontman says of Sworn To The Dark. "We want to take away the parts that are just confusing and leave the primal, raw energy in there that everyone can understand. This whole album is more traditional. Each melody, each song, is much more powerful. We thought much more about it, and we felt much stronger when we wrote this record than anything we did previously. But it's a pretty natural evolution — to scale away the superfluous parts and leave room for the things that really mean something."What, ultimately, does Watain hope to accomplish with Sworn to the Dark? "World War III," Danielsson said, matter-of-factly. And while he doesn't advocate church burnings, murders or desecrations, he does see a correlation between black metal and actual physical violence.
"Many people say that they have all these dreams, and they want to do this and they want to do that, and one day they claim they will — but in the end, they end up in their caskets rotting," he explained. "Every thought, every word and every feeling doesn't really hold any relevance until it manifests on a physical plain. That is when it becomes alive. Black metal is not just a funny thing we do in our spare time. It's what we live and breathe. I think [violence is] a very natural component to the black-metal scene ... because black metal is growing grounds for extreme thought, extreme speeches and extreme feelings. At one point or another, these things always manifest. If you call upon death, death will come."Read more here.
