DIADEM OF 12 STARS

Four songs one hour long... if I didn't know better I would think that this would be just another symphonic prog group, boy would I be wrong. Wolves in the Throne room is a satanic progressive black metal band from the United States with three members. Two guitars, one of them a singer, and a drummer, no bass. Even without a Bass or keys, this group is able to produce such rich textures in their music, and are able to provoke so much emotion that just makes you want to boil over in righteous anger. What sounds like a very pretentious band is really one of the most honest, and ingenious groups out there.

This album, Diadem of 12 Stars is definitely not as flexible as their latest album, Two Hunters. There is no atmospheric track to start the album, and there is no tribal drumming, as soon as you press play you are immediately sent to hell! The album starts with Queen of the borrowed light, one of my favorite black metal songs to date. It's dynamic with backing choir like female vocals, fused fuzzy guitars intertwining with each other to make some glorious riffing and chord progressions. In this song, to compliment the lead singers demon-ish shrieks they bring in a guest singer, with one of the most mammoth death metal growls I've ever heard. Having heard Two hunters before this, which didn't include this guy, I flipped out when this monster came in and scared the crap out of me. The song goes to great lengths with an acoustic section thrown in there, a guitar solo, and even some profanity laced vocals to give it a daring edge, all to end perfectly in a massive ending. Best song on the album. The rest of the songs all follow this trend, but all with different experimental sections, some of them good, some of them bad.

One thing that annoyed me with the music was of course, the drumming, the drummer cant seem to shake off the nasty black metal beats at all on this one. On Two Hunters he manages to break this trend, and really make some incredible driving beats. Oh well, looks like he learned his lesson after they got done with this one. Another thing is that the music dose get a little monotonous, without the tribal Esq songs, or strictly atmosphere songs, the album does sometime stoop into sheer black metal madness.

Really not as good as two hunters, all the songs are interesting, but all have certain parts I don't like. Therefore not really deserving of four stars, which sucks cause it really is a great album, and does stick it's head way above what I consider to be three star albums. Oh well, you got to be able to make output that either meets, or rises your other output, and if it doesnt, it cant be rated as high, therefore, the album gets the three stars.