Wolves in the Throne Room - Black Cascade
by Mark Hensch
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An album like Black Cascade is special as it captures feelings human beings do not experience often in the modern age. Listening to it, one steps into the glory of a new world, that vast panorama of unexplored wilderness stretching towards the horizons. It is the blazing of new trails, the forging of new ideals, of going where none has gone before. And for those willing to undertake such an arduous journey, the revelation at path's end makes for one satisfying musical adventure.
Cascade is Wolves in the Throne Room's third trek through the undergrowth of black metal, and, as such, one can be forgiven for encountering a few memorable landmarks also seen on earlier efforts. Wolves still plays long, intricate black metal. As always, their music features an emphasis on somber melody and stark minimalism. Last but not least, it remains readily apparent Cascade possesses the same deep reverence for nature as its progenitors.
Like an animal developing a mutation, however, closer scrutiny of Cascade reveals subtle evolution. The wistful introspection of Two Hunters and Diadem of 12 Stars is largely vanished, replaced instead by a more aggressive brand of predatory black metal. As a whole, the entire CD is a primal howl of anguish over the state of our world. Sinister and lithe, it marks the first time the Wolves have hunted in the deepest, darkest folds of night's embrace.
The album begins with the soft patter of rain drops on Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Murky melodies drift out of the drizzle, all before a torrent of caustic blastbeating, riffs and howls strike like heat lightning. From here, the song's ferocious sprinting soon dies down into fluid washes of sound, the guitars quietly flooding out all distractions. A guitar solo stabs through the misty ambience, unveiling grandiose hills and valley of gloomy riffing. As a song, it feels like the cycle of seasons turned into one glorious piece of music.
Ahrimanic Trance is up next, its feedback squalls quickly swallowed by galloping percussion and vicious guitars cloaked in shadowy distortion. Rhythmic drum lines engage in a dance of death with ghostly guitar melodies, all before the entire song collapses into a prolonged, humming ambience.
A flowing river signals the start of Ex Cathedra, a song which properly begins with serpentine speed-picking and brawny choruses. The entire pack shrieks over doom-invoking metal, the likes of which rises ever higher like ashes in the wind. Eventually the song is sucked into a void of nothingness, only to claw its way out with one of the most confident black metal attacks thus far created in the USBM movement.
Closing Cascade is the epic Crystal Ammunition, a shimmering ode to misanthropy as jagged as the minerals of its title. Piercing melodies ensnare listeners with their stark majesty. Behind them, the drum kit summons spirits via a shamanistic ritual of sound. In a nod towards the band's earlier cannon, a mesmerizing interlude of star-kissed acoustica offers a respite before the bitter end. When the final gasp of desperate, animalistic metal comes, it hits all the harder because of this muted moment preparing the way.
Black Cascade is not just a beautiful album, but a savage and atavistic one. The band playing here has a youthful hunger, a fire which cannot be quenched. Feral and ferocious, this record propels Wolves in the Throne Room atop stately new heights.
Tracklisting
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
Ahrimanic Trance
Ex Cathedra
Crystal Ammunition
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Wolves in the Throne Room - Black Cascade
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