Wolves In The Throne Room - Thrice Woven
The Quietus
Pacific Northwesterners Wolves In The Throne Room have long been masters at creating moments of clarity: those instances where their ear-splitting black metal engine cuts out and leaves the song to glide on unassisted, breaking out of the broiling storm clouds and into a clear canopy of sunlight. It’s a knack the band have spent 15 years perfecting, and Thrice Woven offers a textbook example of this halfway through opening track 'Born From The Serpent's Eye'.
After a four-and-a-half minute barrage of tremolo riffs sprinting over rocky blast beats, the song shoots over a cliff edge into silence. Instead of capitalising on this shock to push down into the choppy waves below, as many of their peers might, WITTR allow their momentum to fade away. Swedish singer Anna von Hausswolff’s hymn-like harmonies entwine with heavenly wind chimes. Then, just when it feels like this nirvana might never end, the Weaver brothers crash back in with a jolt of thunder.
It really feels like WITTR have been away for longer than they have. Their last album, 2014's ambient Celestite, was more an exercise in musical theory than a proper release - a concession to the unwritten rule that, at some point in their career, every black metal band has to try their hand at something that isn't black metal. Heavily influenced by electronic pioneers such as Cluster and Brian Eno, Celestite was the sound of the band (who have always had a thing for sparse synthesizer arrangements) pushing their abilities to the limit in the studio without thinking too hard about where they were going next. They could easily have taken a leaf out of the book of Ulver, or Sólstafir, or (urgggh) Burzum and continued down this path, moving away from the genre that spawned them in search of completely new musical pastures.
Fascinating though this approach could have been, it is not what has happened. Musically there is little but time that separates Thrice Woven from the ‘trilogy’ of Diadem of 12 Stars, Black Cascade and Celestial Lineage, all recorded under Southern Lord, and most of the songs here could be swapped with those on the last of this trio without raising too many eyebrows. Under the surface, however, there is a subtle evolution of style.
Past WITTR albums have tended to exude either an autumnal or wintry atmosphere and, once again, the band have chosen to release their album in September, just as the year descends into its slow demise. However, there’s an unexpectedly triumphal undercurrent to ‘The Old Ones Are with Us’ that feels like the premature coming of spring. “Winter is dying / The sun is returning / The ice is receding / The rivers are flowing,” the brothers growl, as if summoning the sun back from its arctic slumber.
As a band whose music tends to twist and transform like the unpredictable weather of Washington State, they have definitely managed to produce music with a positive vibe before. Usually, though, these warm moments are fleeting - brief beams of sunlight that break through the clouds and emphasise the mist of melancholy that surrounds them. For over eight minutes here, though, hope is the focus - it's an incredibly uplifting experience, coming from a band whose senses seem better attuned to the planet we live on than most.
The second half of the album lacks the spirit of its first two transcendent tracks. 'Angrboda', named after Loki's giant mistress, owes altogether too much to Darkthrone circa Ravishing Grimness and Windir at their windiest. The well-named but forgettable closer 'Fires Roar In The Palace Of The Moon' spends a full 12 minutes questing for a moment of impact that never arrives. But, for those first 19 glorious minutes, Thrice Woven skirts the eye of the storm, flitting between untrammelled power and celestial beauty with a finesse that few can match.
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Thu Sep 21 08:14:55 GMT 2017Drowned In Sound 80
It may be hard to remember now, but there once was a time when Wolves in the Throne Room were considered rather controversial. Black metal, for all its iconoclastic tendencies, has never been a genre renowned for giving newcomers an easy ride, and its certainly true to say that the Olympia, Washington band were awarded a divisive reception from the scene at large. They have been derided by some for a supposedly pretentious level of concern for the environment, and by others for a perceived dilution of black metal’s core sonic properties. These, rather tiresome, criticisms, were swept away by the time the band (composed chiefly of brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver) unveiled their fourth full-length, Celestial Lineage, in 2011. One of the most devastatingly effective black metal records of recent times, it silenced many a doubter through its sheer conviction.
The same could not be said about its follow-up, 2014’s Celestite, a pleasant but ultimately rather unsatisfying ambient work that was more Tangerine Dream than Trelldom. It was a pleasingly confident move for a band that had just won over many of their former critics in a notoriously hard-to-please scene, but not one that seems to have had a significant impact. Three years on and the Weaver brothers appear to have a new project, Drow Elixir, to showcase their ambient interests. Wolves in the Throne Room have moved back to black metal, and Thrice Woven arrives on the back of an enormous wave of expectation, one that appears both to have forgotten Celestite and any past misgivings about the band’s status as one of the foremost black metal acts on the planet.
Stylistically following up on the increased sense of grandeur present on Celestial Lineage, Thrice Woven is sure to satisfy those who have waited six years for its arrival. Like many of the other participants in the Cascadian black metal wave they helped start, Wolves in the Throne Room’s sound has expanded outwards since their early days. The cold, frostbitten elements that those of us conditioned by the Norwegian bands of the early nineties have come to expect are mostly absent. Instead there is a certain degree of warmth to the band’s sound, aided a great deal by the grandiose synth backings present throughout. Even at the album’s harshest, most overtly metal moments, Wolves in the Throne Room conjure up images of Washington’s pine forests at sunset, rather than of the snow-covered fjords and mountains often (lazily) assumed to be black metal’s main landscape.
At its strongest – the colossal ‘The Old Ones Are With Us’ stands out – Thrice Woven is one of those glorious black metal records that creates a world around it. It’s an immersive listening experience, the band’s colossal guitar sound (aided by guitarist Kody Keyworth, who is now a full-time member of the group, alongside the Weavers) operating as the borders of a distinct and fully formed sound world. Much like when the band play live, there is something hypnotically engaging about Wolves in the Throne Room. Too many black metal acts are prone to uneven songwriting and, perhaps even more problematically, rather haphazard (or non-existent) editing. These problems, present to some degree on Wolves in the Throne Room’s first album (Diadem of Twelve Stars), are nowhere to be seen here. Thrice Woven’s forty-three minutes absolutely fly by. It’s a whirlwind of a journey.
Whether this is actually the band’s finest work to date or not (one senses that only time will tell), Thrice Woven proves beyond any remaining doubt that Wolves in the Throne Room are one of the – if not the – finest black metal acts on the planet today. This is a record of confidence, maturity, and style. It doesn’t break any boundaries, and it’s not a reinvention of the band’s sound, but it is spectacular proof of black metal’s continued power and effectiveness. Not quite a milestone then, but a release that’s set to be remembered for a very long time to come.
Wed Sep 27 15:47:06 GMT 2017Drowned In Sound 80
It may be hard to remember now, but there once was a time when Wolves in the Throne Room were considered rather controversial. Black metal, for all its iconoclastic tendencies, has never been a genre renowned for giving newcomers an easy ride, and its certainly true to say that the Olympia, Washington band were awarded a divisive reception from the scene at large. They have been derided by some for a supposedly pretentious level of concern for the environment, and by others for a perceived dilution of black metal’s core sonic properties. These, rather tiresome, criticisms, were swept away by the time the band (composed chiefly of brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver) unveiled their fourth full-length, Celestial Lineage, in 2011. One of the most devastatingly effective black metal records of recent times, it silenced many a doubter through its sheer conviction.
The same could not be said about its follow-up, 2014’s Celestite, a pleasant but ultimately rather unsatisfying ambient work that was more Tangerine Dream than Trelldom. It was a pleasingly confident move for a band that had just won over many of their former critics in a notoriously hard-to-please scene, but not one that seems to have had a significant impact. Three years on and the Weaver brothers appear to have a new project, Drow Elixir, to showcase their ambient interests. Wolves in the Throne Room have moved back to black metal, and Thrice Woven arrives on the back of an enormous wave of expectation, one that appears both to have forgotten Celestite and any past misgivings about the band’s status as one of the foremost black metal acts on the planet.
Stylistically following up on the increased sense of grandeur present on Celestial Lineage, Thrice Woven is sure to satisfy those who have waited six years for its arrival. Like many of the other participants in the Cascadian black metal wave they helped start, Wolves in the Throne Room’s sound has expanded outwards since their early days. The cold, frostbitten elements that those of us conditioned by the Norwegian bands of the early nineties have come to expect are mostly absent. Instead there is a certain degree of warmth to the band’s sound, aided a great deal by the grandiose synth backings present throughout. Even at the album’s harshest, most overtly metal moments, Wolves in the Throne Room conjure up images of Washington’s pine forests at sunset, rather than of the snow-covered fjords and mountains often (lazily) assumed to be black metal’s main landscape.
At its strongest – the colossal ‘The Old Ones Are With Us’ stands out – Thrice Woven is one of those glorious black metal records that creates a world around it. It’s an immersive listening experience, the band’s colossal guitar sound (aided by guitarist Kody Keyworth, who is now a full-time member of the group, alongside the Weavers) operating as the borders of a distinct and fully formed sound world. Much like when the band play live, there is something hypnotically engaging about Wolves in the Throne Room. Too many black metal acts are prone to uneven songwriting and, perhaps even more problematically, rather haphazard (or non-existent) editing. These problems, present to some degree on Wolves in the Throne Room’s first album (Diadem of Twelve Stars), are nowhere to be seen here. Thrice Woven’s forty-three minutes absolutely fly by. It’s a whirlwind of a journey.
Whether this is actually the band’s finest work to date or not (one senses that only time will tell), Thrice Woven proves beyond any remaining doubt that Wolves in the Throne Room are one of the – if not the – finest black metal acts on the planet today. This is a record of confidence, maturity, and style. It doesn’t break any boundaries, and it’s not a reinvention of the band’s sound, but it is spectacular proof of black metal’s continued power and effectiveness. Not quite a milestone then, but a release that’s set to be remembered for a very long time to come.
Wed Sep 27 15:47:06 GMT 2017Pitchfork 52
On the follow-up to 2014’s electronic departure, Celestite, the Olympia band stumble in the attempt to find their way back to classic black metal.
Tue Sep 26 05:00:00 GMT 2017