Wolves in the Throne Room
Estuary
RELAPSE/CENTURY MEDIA
Is there a genre that conjures a vivid sense of location better than black metal? It’s a big claim, but the epic scale, intense emotions, and ultra-distinct aesthetic palette often means that the finest acts in the genre possess a thrilling ability to place listeners on a mist-strewn hillside, the threshold of a cavernous castle dungeon, or within a nightmarish otherworld. But beyond these familiar atmospheric obsessions, the bands on the more ambient, melodic, or “post-” ends of the scale boast the ability to manipulate space in a less literal manner. Lengthy songs warp our conception of time, tremolo guitars blur in an impressionistic whirl, blast beat drums hypnotize, driving choral synths and grandiose melodies spin like wheels on a cosmic chariot.
Wolves in the Throne Room are among black metal’s most complete modern practitioners. They straddle myriad ends of the genre’s spectrum: They’re intense and raw enough to be appreciated by true cvlt genre obsessives while experimental and sometimes melodic enough to be enjoyed by non-black metal fans. Their Cascadian Mountain origins bleed through the music, whose layers of textured instrumentation enshroud each track like mountain fog, while the harsh vocals snarl like the band’s namesakes giving chase. Their discography is also stacked full of small but intriguing diversions to their black-ambient sound (in addition to one big one: the ethereal kosmiche of 2014’s Celestite), a mode their latest full-length Estuary continues with compelling aplomb.
These six well-sculpted tracks are black metal for the biggest possible audience. They never dilute the genre’s singular trademarks, however Wolves in the Throne Room do manage to amplify the richest, most atmosphere-focused black metal traits in service of a hugely gripping listen. Estuary is a concept album, set in nature-reclaimed Earth a thousand years in the future. Without even reading the lyrics (the vocals, true to their genre, are obviously not comprehensible), this sense of a world defined by absences is palpable. Passages of eerie electronica—such as the opening of “Foretold in Reflections,” or the close of “Ghosts Among the Obelisks”—are spectral and strange, like echoes bouncing off vine-creeping concrete.
Then there are several tracks that really ramp up the gothic undercurrent that’s always been present in the band’s ornate, layered music. A sorrowful lament for an empty world, album highlight “Foretold in Reflections” is a mid-tempo headbanger that features great bass lines, echoing drums, and doom-laden keys. Impressively, this mode never overpowers Wolves in the Throne Room’s usual sonic schematics. It’s an atmospheric expansion of not just their own sound but also that of the genre they primarily operate within, boasting an emotional landscape as palpable as the dark, decaying, and starkly beautiful world of Estuary’s sci-fi narrative.
