Sweden’s black metal hellions Watain have been on a fearsome tear. The Wild Hunt finds them expanding their ambition with ballads and other left turns.
Thrash metal, pure and simple. Battlecross wastes no time ripping your face off with polka beats and riffs in thirds (Slayer, Dark Angel, everyone since).
I liked the glammified sounds used to spice up 2005’s Are You Dead Yet?, but most fans felt the opposite, so the next two COB albums dialed up the brutality.