专辑简介

by Thom Jurek

Virtually anyone who came into contact with Wolves in the Throne Room's 2005 long-player, Diadem of 12 Stars on Vendlus, fell in love with it, and for good reason. This Olympia, WA, underground black metal trio had its own take on the music; sure, it had blastbeats, screeching vocals, and furious riffs, but there is so much more to it than that. Oh yeah, no corpse paint, either (though an occasional hooded robe is worn in caves around campfires). For starters, their title track was 20 minutes long, and it changed constantly, layered through with heavy atmospherics, dark bewitching gloomy soundscapes that evoked the sound of the rain in the foggy forests of their hometown. The entire record -- even with its furious speeds alternating with funereal dirges, gorgeously paranoid ghostly keyboard passages, and a female vocal or two -- still had more than enough howling, buzzing guitars, and distorted crunch drums amid the blazing bass throb. Most importantly, so sophisticated was their approach to this rather bleak and primitive art form that they sounded as if they'd been recording together for decades. Two Hunters, the band's debut for Southern Lord, follows the same blueprint in some ways, but furthers it exponentially. Like its predecessor, there are only four cuts over 46 minutes, ranging from six minutes to just under 20. Wolves in the Throne Room are actually composers who understand how to assemble a suite of music that maximizes dynamics, tensions, moods, and textures without ever surrendering the flip-out unglued vibe that makes black metal so special. ...