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Wolves In The Throne Room: Celestial lineage
10/08/13 || The Duff
While you still have the purists, combined with those who to my complete puzzlement are still following Darkthrone (and more alarmingly, Burzum), it would seem that even to those open-minded mo’fo’s like me who masturbate to transsexual pornography (looking for women ‘with that little bit extra’), modern black metal is on a bit of a lull.
Modern bands are either all too focused on over-produced, keyboard-heavy or the new wave of French black metal which, to my mind, cannot be bettered other than by the masters themselves, namely DsO – yeah, I’ll play with myself to a woman with a dick, but I will at least change the video to good ol’ fashioned vagina and gagging scenes before I ejaculate.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person with principles left these days.
See now Blut Aus Nord have gone belly-up, and I find that the next BM album I’m despairingly most looking forward to is Watain fair dos, a gifted band, but certainly not reinventing the BM wheel (for anyone looking for truly revolutionary, modern black metal, check out the latest Altar of Plagues, perhaps). So surprise then that I should be sticking to this early Burzum/early Enslaved hybrid of atmospheric, ‘eco-black metal’.
This is a wonder to me, because their best album is either one of the first two, the second especially for its most blatant post-rock additions. Nevertheless, the band is still not remarkable but rather average with moments of grandiose, evocative and dare I say beautiful should I promise to drink a pint of virgin’s blood soon thereafter. They seem to have been touted by many though as saviors of new-age BM, and the band itself has stated that “Celestial Lineage” is their best work to date; I being a compulsive CD buyer and a bit of a completist decided to (stupidly) venture further.
Has the band changed much? No. Although I admit having skipped “Black Cascade” and, according to fans, the disappointing E.P. preceding said full-length, “Celestial Lineage” appears a mix of “Diadem of 12 Stars” and “Two Hunters”, mixing the epic, folk, female jibbly bits, keys, doom and buzzsaw, uninspired riffs with a bit of post-rock sensitivity and imagery of waterfalls and trees and frolicking things. The band remains as ever commonplace, making their reputation sound far larger than is due, blown out of all proportion, basically.
For what it is, this certainly is no bad record, but really you are better off with either the first two records, or basically early Enslaved, early Blut Aus Nord, early Negura Bunget, any black metal band that started out in the nineties, when keyboards weren’t nearly as extravagant nor predominant, when they made true Burzum-borne guitar riffs float as opposed to drowning out angular, primitive (and horrible) melodies and thus being the sole component to the music that was bringing the atmos (with the exception of raspy vocals, of course, which evoke dreams of ghosts walking through misted woods, one hundred percent failproof and all of the time).
I don’t see what this band is doing here in 2011, twenty years on from second-wave and even third-wave outfits, but to award this a score for something to listen to in bubble-baths, sure, here, have at it: the arrangements are epic, quite lush and well thought out, there is no shortage of natural-sounding, peace-inducing instruments, and the production is a well balanced mix of ye ol’ BM dry and effervescent.
The vocals, to give them their due, are exceptionally complementary, very eerie and emotive (reminding me of Ihsahn during his “In the Nightside Eclipse”-phase, so basically as classic as classic can get), the keys blanket the music to great effect, the riffs alternating between long, drawn out melodies to buzzing punk, post-rock to furiously picked tremolo chords – nothing any fan of black metal will be unacquainted with – and the drums follow suit with quite the hollow timbre, a ringing, open clashing and very live and lively sound to the cymbals, adding to the spacious atmosphere, as I said, “eco-metal”.
The format to a WITTR remains barely unchanged with the exception of two interlude tracks and one short’un (bringing back the band’s oft used female vocals), which acts more a lead-up to the track “Astral Blood”, leaving us with the standard 4 intricately arranged cuts that take us over a multitude of feeling; all in all, “Celestial Lineage” is a good album, just unnecessary, in my mind – I fail to see how the band is interpreted as part of a BM renaissance.
- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Southern Lord
- Website: Wolves In The Throne RoomBandcamp
- Band
- Aaron Weaver: drums, guitars, percussion, synth, field recordings
- Nathan Weaver: vocals, guitars, synth, broken mellotron, field recordings
- Tracklist
- 01. Thuja Magus Imperium
- 02. Permanent Changes in Consciousness
- 03. Subterranean Initiation
- 04. Rainbow Illness
- 05. Woodland Cathedral
- 06. Astral Blood
- 07. Prayer of Transformation
