I must admit, when I first encountered the Swedish Luciferian black metal powerhouse that is Watain, I was not entirely convinced. The unhinged, all-cylinders-firing battery of Casus Luciferi (my initiation into their unholy rites) was too much for me… at first. It took some time to embrace the chaos and revel in the maelstrom of unholy passion that is Erik Danielsson’s personal testament to the dark lord. 2010’s Lawless Darkness was thus welcomed as an old friend, while 2013’s The Wild Hunt stands head and shoulders above all other Swedish black metal releases for me: better even than Marduk’s Serpent Sermon, Dark Funeral’s Secrets of the Black Arts or the genre-defining Storm of the Light’s Bane by Dissection, to name a few. As a result, Trident Wolf Eclipse had large shoes to fill in 20...