Title: Woodland cathedral
Format: Album track
Written by: Aaron and Nathan Weaver
Performed by: Wolves in the Throne Room
Genre: Black Metal
Taken from: Celestial Lineage
Year: 2011
Acclaim: n/a
Time to go for a band with wolves in the name rather than a song, and there are a few. I remember reviewing, I think it was,
Two Hunters, probably for Metal Month at some point, and being mightily impressed with it. Over the course of three years of running Metal Month, I did gain a new appreciation for
some Black Metal, not all – bands like Panopticon, Gehenna and Blut Aud Nord really spoke to me, and in screechy voices I had not expected to listen to, but I did – and so I don't have the kind of trepidation about listening to it that I would have had, say, three years ago, nearly four now. As it happens, I seem to have stumbled, in my patented Trollheart close-your-eyes-and-run-across-the-road method of choosing albums, upon what seems to be regarded as one of their best, or to put it in the words of critic Brandon Stousuy, “American Black Metal's idiosyncratic defining record of 2011”. Um, yeah. I'm assuming that means he likes it. Will I? Well, who knows, but it's just the one track I'm taking, and as most of the tracks are in the double-digit mark, I've chosen one that's only six.
I know WitTR tend to veer a little towards the more pagan side, as it were, of Black Metal, which is to say, they come down a little more on the hard, melodic manner of Pagan Metal as opposed to the breakneck, cursing and roaring of some other Black Metal I could name. This one certainly has dark medieval overtones, much more than the Rainbow song, with almost a kind of slow, doomy chant in the opening, female vocals of all things. Who by? Let me just check that. Oh. Jessika Kenney, apparently, an experimental vocalist whose bag is mostly Persian and Indonesian music. Indeed. Well she does well here. I'm pretty sure I can hear a church organ going, slow, heavy, muted percussion, not too much guitar, though it does come in later.
It's the kind of song that I would, were someone to tell me, scoff and say there's no way it's Black Metal, if my understanding of this wide and varied subgenre had not changed forever over the last few years. Far from being all about screeching maniacs and guitars played rather less expertly than a novice punk band in the late seventies, it's a deep, thoughtful, dark cornucopia of various styles, vocals, ideas and lyrics, and while you can certainly lump many Black Metal bands in the one category, others just refuse to be pushed into a box. Wolves in the Throne Room are one of those. Further listening definitely required.
Things I like about this :
1. Not your “standard” Black Metal song
2. Female vocals
3. Good use of the organ
4. Great ominous percussion
5. Very slow, almost more Doom Metal at times
Things I don't like about this:
Nothing, really
Rating: 