WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM cranked out four excellent albums in the aforementioned hybridized stylistic approach but then 2011's "Celestial Lineage" dabbled in blackgaze and with the following "Celestite" pretty much abandoned the metal aspects altogether in favor of an electronic space ambient album with only traces of drone metal. This did not go over well with fans and the band has sort of been licking its wounds ever since and although WITTR returned in 2017 with the excellent "Thrice Woven," so many new bands had come onto the scene that it seemed that this band sort of sputtered out of the race.


Oh how finicky metal fans can be! Four years later WOLVES returns with its ninth overall studio album PRIMORDIAL ARCANA and makes a welcome return to the full-on atmospheric black metal from the past. While some are crying retrograde and others are castigating the band for backpedaling and relying too much on its past glories rather than innovation, the truth is WOLVES needed to re-establish itself as the atmospheric black metal band that it once was if it wanted to remain relevant in the black metal game. In recent years all sorts of metal bands ranging from Leprous, Haken and The Ruins of Beverast just to name a few have toned down their metal ferocity and in the process have alienated quite a few fans although they surely must have gained some new ones.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM has suffered like many a popular band trying to experiment outside of their fanbase comfort zone but by no means has cranked out anything utterly unlistenable in its entire canon. PRIMORDIAL ARCANA reestablishes WOLVES as a viable atmospheric black metal band that deftly integrates the dungeon synth and electronic sounds into its Pagan black metal world which tackles eight atmospheric tracks that enjoy a sleek silky production as the mid-tempo compositions slink along alternating between the melodic keyboard hooks and the thundering guitar riffs and blastbeats. You know, the very stuff that made albums like "Diadem of 12 Stars" and "Two Hunters" stand out amongst the rest of the pack. However it's not 2006-07 any longer and a new legion of black metal bands have taken things to even stranger and more innovative pastures and that's exactly where PRIMORDIAL ARCANA falters.

There seems to be an opinion by many that unless any given band changes its sound or evolves in some way that the entire process is an utter waste of time. Well true that some bands that recycle an album for over 20 years are completely boring to my ears, the truth is that when a band like WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM never really exhausted the magnanimous bounty of their developed sound then it's actually not a bad thing to retread and recapture those moments that worked so well. It's even more amazing that WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM has been able to work its way back to over a decade and recapture the inspiration that made that period so innovative. While PRIMORDIAL ARCANA won't win any awards for most creative or innovative album of the year, i do have to say that this is indeed an enjoyable slice of atmospheric black metal emphasizes the band's strengths that have been proven to be a winning formula.

To my ears this is an excellent album that delivers everything you would expect from an icy cold Pagan black metal that emphasizes atmospheric ambience over all else and the compositions are tight and brilliantly laid out as well. Somehow despite a misstep with "Celestial" (which probably should've been released as an EP), WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM is like the Olympic gymnast who falls flat on his/her face only to get up and dazzle the audience with unexpected resilience. While it's easy to criticize any given act for taking the easy way out and taking the path of least resistance, i have to wonder why anybody would consider retreading a brilliant blend of progressive black metal with electronic nuances an easy task to repeat. This album is simply flawless in its execution and will yield many return listens unlike some of the band's most recent albums.

A return to their black metal roots, with more ambience and soft passages.

With this album WitTR overall leave behind sound on their last album Celestite and return to their black metal roots, albeit with softer sections, more synths, more ambience and guest musicians.

The production seems clearer than on earlier albums and the singing seems less buried in the mix.

The black metal is as atmospheric, raw and good as ever and the softer passages add some variance to the sound, which is half of a good thing.

Unfortunately, the ambient noises don't always add much to the songs in my opinion. I could very well do without nearly two minutes of sea noises at the end of Fires Roar in the Palace of the Moon and I understand them to be just one very long outro. The transitions between metal and ambient passages don't seem to work very well. Rather, transitions seem to be missing and they often just play metal passages and ambient passages after each other. This can make the songs seem disconnected.

As far as variance and transitions go, the pagan folk passages integrated into the black metal work much better, in my opinion. There are also more synth touches than on earlier albums, a fact that I also quite like. The added variance in singing, with some clear (guest) vocals works very well. In the Old Ones Are With Us these three things are added to the WitTR sound to great effect.

This is a strong album that I don't find quite as exciting as their run from Two Hunters to Celestial Lineage. As such it gets a good but non-essential rating from me.

Maybe this sound and style just worked better 10 years ago, as black metal has been quite thoroughly explored in the meantime.

Okay, it's probably their worst album, but you've got to give Wolves credit for how competent this is, given they'd never really even hinted at a sound like this before. It's not like so many of the modern atmospheric black metal bands, who owe an awful lot to Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in their synth wandering - WITTR had always struck me as more earthly and grounded, about nature not space, and this is a really strong change of aesthetic for them. I particularly enjoy the occasional bursts of guitars and darkness, reminding everyone who they really are, but the ambience is solid regardless. It does what it's meant to do, and it makes for excellent nighttime reading music.

6.3 (4th listen)

Part of my listening diary from my facebook music blog - www.facebook.com/TheExoskeletalJunction

The music on the album is atmospheric black metal with harsh raspy vocals (and occasional female vocals by Jessika Kenney) and nature based lyrical themes. The album features seven tracks. Two are shorter instrumentals but most of the other tracks are pretty long with three of them hitting the 10 minute mark. The tracks are adventurous and epic sounding with grand walls of synths and guitars. The band successfully vary pace and dynamics throughout the album making "Celestial Lineage" an album with a nice flow and also an album where my attention never wanders. Add to that a powerful and detailed sound production and we have a quality product and a 4 star (80%) rating is fully deserved.

"Diadem In 12 Stars" has interesting traits and promises great things for Wolves In the Throne Room.

American Black Metal for some is just a joke. That is, for the Black Metal (pretentious) purists. But Wolves In The Throne Room prove how these people are wrong. Their debut album was "Diadem In 12 Stars", an album that shows the uniqueness of the band and how, even though not having extremely solid roots in the Scandinavian scene, they are credible, and loyal to the genre.

Even from the start, WITTR have received attention because of their sound: this debut album of theirs distances itself from the more traditional side of BM, incorporating different styles and making them mesh one another: there are a great amount of shoegazey guitars, female clean vocals, audible melodies, atmospheric acoustic passages, and quite a bit of dynamicity. Their music is hypnotic but not repetitive, complex but easy to follow. The richness of the textures, the variety, and the carefully structured songs make Wolves a much more progressive influenced band in comparisons with other Atmospheric Black Metal bands like Burzum or early Ulver, also because of the unusually different rhythms, more syncopated and elaborate than the stale ones of the more traditional bands.

"Diadem in 12 Stars" is one of those albums whose cover perfectly reflects the music of the album: with a cascade surrounded by trees and by fog, it brings the listener right in front of that spectacle: in the more hypnotic moments, one finds himself directly underneath the cascade, bathed by ethereal, silvery water that falls either smoothly or harshly. There is in fact a strong feeling of ethereal, dreamy nature in the compositions and in the lyrics, that echoes throughout the entire album.

With only four tracks and an hour worth of length, "Diadem In 12 Stars" is an extremely consistent album in terms of structure: it's biggest gripe is the fact that these songs are made out of the same ingredients, and the resulting cake tastes the same. Even though the variation is of course undeniable within the songs, there is no variation from track to track, and the formulas are just repeated again, becoming a little stale when reaching to an end to this LP. The songs, studied individually, are all good, pretty entertaining (even though some moments feel simply passive and not as engaging as they should), and well planned. It seems though that the album as a whole does not feel like that as much.

"Diadem In 12 Stars" is a decent start-off point for Wolves in The Throne Room. Already received a cult status among the lovers (non-purists) of the genre, this debut release is a promising one, and clearly the promises the band gave here came true later on in 2007 (one year later) with "Two Hunters".

"Two Hunters" provides an image of the dark corners of the world.

Along maybe with bands like Agalloch, Wolves In Throne Room is now one of America's most recognized Black Metal bands: in 2007, they released 'Two Hunters', so far the absolute pinnacle of their career and one of the best albums of the scene.

'Diadem in 12 Stars' was their debut album which had a very unique take on Blackgaze; the sound was very ethereal and harsh at the same time. 'Two Hunters' perfects that atmosphere by a whole lot, with much more brave, shoegazey and unearthly passages soaked in reverb, which gain a touch of beauty when female vocals, that seem to come from heaven, are added. Then we still have the grim, electric passages. But, despite the great amount of Black Metal in this release, everything sounds much more clean and less raw than in 'Diadem': the reverb is possibly the greatest reason why it doesn't feel that heavy, but it's also the fact that WITTR on this one decided to focus much more intensely on the atmosphere.

The lyrics are probably the most enigmatic and fascinating aspect of the album: 'I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks And Roots' is a sort of a dying wish of the persona: he wants to be left in the woods, so that he becomes one with nature, entering, this way, into a new life. Then 'Vastness and Sorrow' is more complex: it involves a dark rider who rules the world, as he is the only living being there. The world moves to his horse's steps, as he passes through ruins of a once great civilization, a symbol of failure of mankind. 'Cleansing' seems to describe an encouragement to have a ritual act of purification through singing, in order to be saved from the dark rider, who is mentioned.

With only four tracks, 'Two Hunters' provides the listener, in less than fifty minutes, a vivid image of dark, hidden corners of the world where man has not yet visited; A damp, black cave, in which there is a waterfall of the purest of waters. 'Dia Artio' is the intro the starts off this unique journey, where the reverb-soaked clean guitars set the stage. The twelve minute 'Vastness and Sorrow' is a gloomy Black Metal piece that finds no pause, no mercy, managing to be the darkest track on the album. 'Cleansing' starts off with a vein similar to the intro, but then explodes into yet another Black Metal passage. The final, eighteen minute track is home of a bunch of solid, solemn and somber riffs, occasionally purified with the watery clean moments. As the music dissolves, at the end of the album, the sound of birds comes in , giving more coherency to the lyrical concept of the song, by this point of view one of the great closers of Black Metal history.

'Two Hunters' will be remembered as a Black Metal landmark album, an album that will be, over the years. a point of reference for many bands; even today, the Blackgaze movement is, although mostly underground, increasing exponentially, and will possibly domain most of future Black Metal. When that happens, Wolves In The Throne Room have a reserved place in the Olympus of legendary Metal bands.

The general concept seems to be of natural wildernesses as being sacred spaces in their own right, and by and large the album is very successful at getting the idea across, with the slow closer Prayer of Transcendence somehow managing to transform black metal from a cold, angry, misanthropic hellstorm into something more contemplative and, well, transcendent. Purists may sneer, but there's little doubt in my mind that Wolves are presenting a profoundly different and novel take on the genre with this album, and it certainly inspires me to check out more of their work. Combining the musical approach of Burzum or Darkthrone with the aesthetic and spiritual stance of, say, the early Tyrannosaurus Rex albums or Devendra Banhart really shouldn't work as well as this.