Within the realm of current black metal, Portland’s Wolves in the Throne Room have truly perfected the art of projecting ethereality. And the band’s new release, Celestial Lineage, faithfully reaffirms this. The remarkability of Wolves’ sound lies in their ability to create an atmosphere that is both sinister and consoling; progressive, yet suspended in some antiquated, fantastical nostalgia.
While the bands’ most former release Black Cascade, relied upon a sound that suggested a more cryptic momentum toward some darksome end, Celestial Lineage takes the listener into a more tranquil progression. The album, on the whole, feels somewhat bittersweet, as if making promises for the future that are tainted with past sorrows. Waves of culmination so prevalent in the bands past work still remains, but this time around we are lulled more delicately throughout the listening experience.
The first track sets the ambience with “Thuja Magus Imperium” which opens with female vocals over whimsical chimes and sustained guitar processions, and achieves something like the soundtrack to a panorama of some ancient place shadowed in glistening, gray light. “Permanent Changes in Consciousness”, the most meditative track, consists of “Ohm” chanting against the methodical scraping of knife against stone, perhaps in ritual preparation for some trial of sacrifice or death. This second track feels like the calm before the storm of the quick building of “Subterranean Initiation”. The chanticleer of “Woodland Cathedral” lends an almost prayerful element to the middle of the album and is proceeded by the drum-driven momentum of “Astral Blood” – in keeping with the rise and fall, the calm and then climax, of the album’s progression on the whole.
Wolves maintains their ability to bring the listener into a realm of contemplation, giving one’s vibrations of thought a level of significance and poignancy that one hears very rarely within this genre of metal. The band has added yet another impressive symphony to their repertoire and upon listening, you may feel your mind being etherized by the ancient, vastness of space that surrounds from both above and below.
