Wolves in the Throne Room - Thrice Woven

The Washington-based black metal brothers have returned from their strange venture into purely ambient music to the American black metal they helped pave the way for, but seemingly rusty. Having always been a band to whom lengthy, multi-part compositions are natural and commonplace, I was surprised to see Wolves in the Throne Room struggling to sew their musical ideas together into the four main pieces comprising the album. So many parts of songs seem incompatible with each other, primarily because the musical motifs within each song seem more stacked atop each other than composed into cooperation with each other. It’s unfortunate because the band’s performances are more than adequate and they sound not at all awkward in the style. The album sounds good when it’s momentum is in, but so many confusing transitions, from background-level ambiance to background-level black metal ambiance, destroy the band’s momentum and… ambiance. Overall, I don’t know how much I’ll be returning to this album, seeing as it’s sort of chasing a similarly diverse atmosphere to that of Celestial Lineage, accomplished more fully by that album and its predecessors.

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