Entry 344 - Wolves in the Throne Room - Black Cascade

 

Wolves in the Throne room were one of the first USBM bands that I took seriously. Prior to this I only really liked a couple of bands from the US, and even then those were limited to an album or two. When I first heard Two Hunters I knew that the scene in the US had changed.

Black Cascade follows up Two Hunters in a direction that I wasn't sure I was going to like at first. Two Hunters was a masterwork of atmospheric black metal, working in ambient sections and countered by hypnotic black metal... it was and still is a deeply engaging album that I revisit frequently.

On their third album Wolves strip back almost all of the ambience and focus more on hypnotic blasting black metal. The riffs repeat in such a way that the listener is entranced and never let out of the embrace of the song until the end. The riffs are most often accompanied by a blast beat who's tempo is set to match that of the tremolo riffing nearly perfect.

There are four songs on here, all over ten minutes in length. While all of them are good songs, the opener is by far my favorite. It manages to create such a dense atmosphere through the riffs that it makes me lean back, close my eyes and take it all in. The last two minutes in particular adds in a lead guitar to the songs main riff that elevates the song to near perfection.

In the end is this as good as Two Hunters? No it's not. It's a different take on the bands ever evolving atmospheric black metal, Wolves.. have never been afraid to experiment and this album shows that they were ever evolving in their sound. While it's not as good as Two Hunters, I don't really care. It's a different square in the same tapestry that is known as Wolves in the Throne Room.