While I am not generally one to categorically dismiss entire genres of music, my interest in black metal has historically been for the wrong reasons (I am amused by things that are cartoonishly evil). Despite my love for extreme music, I feel I have to draw the line at corpse-painted adults operatically shrieking about Satan or hobbits. Wolves In The Throne Room, however, are not ridiculous. In fact, they are kind of absolutely amazing.
Olympia, Washington’s Wolves In The Throne Room contains no murderers, church-burners, or even a single dwarf that is too evil to be named. Nevertheless, they certainly have their own unusual and oft-mythologized backstory. The core of the group consists of two brothers (Nathan and Aaron Weaver) who were inspired to start the band at an Earth First! event in the Cascade Mountains as an attempt to combine the misanthropy of their sinister Norwegian musical brethren with earthy spirituality and radical environmentalism. Their ultimate aim is to "create a mythic space where artist and listener alike could strip away the mindset of the mundane to reveal a more ancient and transcendent consciousness." Also, they live in a collapsed farmhouse/rural stronghold called Calliope. I always like bands that live in strongholds, although Fela Kuti and Africa '70 is the only other example that springs to mind.
Malevolent Grain is much leaner and single-minded than the band's previous works (which I also enjoy). There are no guitar solos, atmospheric keyboards, interludes, or even a single riff here. Both lengthy songs are built entirely upon relatively simple (albeit tremelo-picked) minor chord progressions that hardly change at all. Surprisingly, this approach works extremely well, as the Wolves have clearly spent an enormous amount of time forging these skeletal song structures into their most intense and face-melting possible manifestation. This facial annihilation is largely rhythmic in origin.
Aaron Weaver's drumming is absolutely stupefying throughout both songs. Though certainly insane and virtuosic, I was especially struck by Weaver's unusual musicality. He may very well be the first drummer that I have heard that can make blast beats seem nuanced. Also, he performs an impressive rhythmic feat on "A Looming Resonance" in which he plays with blistering intensity while still enabling the song to feel like it is moving glacially. I was equally impressed at how he skillfully shifts from minimal head-bobbing grooves, to rumbling double bass, to blast beat intensity in a way that actually seems natural and essential to the songs' dynamic unfolding. One of my primary frustrations with this genre is that spastic blast beats are often just meaningless required components that feel strangely unwarranted and oddly detached from the music around them. On Malevolent Grain, the guitars and drums achieve a singular synergy that I think can only be attained by brothers who have been playing together their entire lives (Max and Igor Cavalera of Sepultura spring to mind as another example of this. Van Halen does not.).
The jaw-dropping first track ("A Looming Resonance") turns over vocal duties to Jamie Meyers (Hammers of Misfortune). Meyers had a cameo on the Wolves debut (Diadem Of 12 Stars), but this is the first time that the band has attempted female vocals for an entire song. It works incredibly well in this case- Meyers' vocals have a Nico-esque detached beauty that serves the material perfectly and almost transcends the black metal genre entirely. This is no small accomplishment, as I usually find female metal vocals to be shrill, unengagingly cold, or so swathed in reverb that they make the band sound like a terrible, sub-Projekt, early nineties goth band. This track is simply devastating in all respects (elegantly melodic vocals aside)- it builds in slow-burning intensity for over thirteen minutes and, weirdly, it more closely resembles Low during one of their rare roaring freak-outs than, for example, Emperor.
I was admittedly disappointed that Nathan reclaimed the microphone for "Hate Crystal," as his traditional black metal shrieking meant a sad farewell to to the EP's earlier somber melodicism. Despite that, it is still a fairly crushing song and it makes a sensible companion piece to "A Looming Resonance." It shares the stripped-down simplicity of its predecessor, but follows an opposite trajectory in that it begins in frenzied and demonically heavy fashion, then gradually becomes less and less intense until it finally dissolves into an ambient hum.
Malevolent Grain is the Wolves first release to feature a second guitarist (Will Lindsay from Middian). It is unclear if this new sinewy simplicity is related to that, or if these two songs were aberrations that would've been out of place amidst the "blazing crystalline blackness and ocean-deep ritualistic dronescapes" of their imminent third album (Black Cascade). I hope it is the former, but these guys seem to be incapable of making a misstep at this stage in their career- perhaps they've already moved onto to something even better.
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