Wolves in the Throne Room's "Celestial Lineage": They Never Disappoint

Olympia, WA's mighty Wolves in the Throne Room never fail to amaze. I've been listening to these guys since the Two Hunters album and the status is always the same: blisteringly progressive, meditative, and psychedelic black metal that shows no sign of compromise, and avoids the dissolution into regrettable cliche and corpse-paint mediocrity that plagues so, so many bands. Now, I'm no major BM apologist, and although the genre has produced what is arguably some of the most boundary-challenging noise witnessed in metal since the 1980's (as well as some of the most notorious metal headlines ever), it's no secret that the utter banality and idiocy that this genre has belched from out of pop culture's distended underbelly since the original progenitors set to burning churches and killing themselves in Europe is the stuff of legend. At the risk of inviting round disdain from the militant: the poseur theatrics, laughable make-up choices, and bargain-basement vision of many BM releases is (to say the least) regrettable; add the misdirected white suburban angst and empty-headed reactionary politics and you've got the perfect recipe for the dumbest music you've never heard of. And there's A LOT of it out there, cropping up all over the developing world (especially) like a wildfire fed on shit and ridiculous hype. So as I said, I walk a tightrope with this genre daily. Some of my favorite albums of the past decade have been BM releases, and I have steadfast faith in the power of this music to produce uncompromisingly anti-mainstream art and blindingly majestic meditations on loss, sorrow, and the destruction of the natural and the mystic. BUT, unfortunately when taken as a whole, the genre can be pretty dismal given the undead army of fascist poseurs and vapid anti-creatives intent on biting image rather than wrecking the boundaries. Dismal indeed, pun intended.

While the above may be the case for a veritable wasteland of forgettable bands, WITTR refuses to follow the same self-defeating logic. Ever since 2006's Diadem of 12 Stars, brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver have done what many of us so desperately crave of our artists: they put integrity above all else, and practice what they preach. Intensely DIY, activist, literate, and above all fucking amazing at what they do, WITTR has pushed boundaries consistently since its first release and continues to do so with impunity, with an increasingly measured effect on the scene at large (which could use a dose of intelligence once in a while that doesn't involve constantly pulling out Weakling's brilliant 1997 opus Dead As Dreams). Celestial Lineage is the third part of a trilogy that began with 2007's Two Hunters and continued with 2008's Black Cascade, both milestones in the field of North American Black Metal for their sound, scope, and feel, channeling and crystallizing the magnificent sweep of WITTR's native Pacific Northwest within the sonic juggernaut of their output (a trend captured in the "Cascadian Black Metal" tag applied to a number of bands in the region). Celestial Lineage, released on Sept. 13 (2011, Southern Lord), continues this trend, and sees the completion of a cycle of albums that may be amongst the most inspired pieces of metal to have been created on this continent in the past decade. On CL, the band again produces an awe-inspiring mixture of traditional BM aesthetics, meditative operatics, and crushing psychedelic black noise that have become trademark. Marking a mild departure from previous albums, Celestial Lineage boasts 7 shorter tracks rather than fewer, longer compositions, though the output is none worse for wear due to the quicker builds and flows in the minimized time slots for each individual piece. Tracks such as "Permanent Changes in Consciousness" and "Rainbow Illness" serve as short, downtempo segues to and from the bellowing intensity of album opener "Thuja Magus Imperium", the blistering "Subterranean Initiation", and the thundering black clouds of "Astral Blood", all of which are prime WITTR. Embedded in the fray is the sublime "Woodland Cathedral" (which was actually featured on NPR of all places), and the Xasthur-esque claustrophobia of "Prayer of Transformation", capped off by close to a minute of near silence, a meditation at the end of the journey.

Do yourself a favor and pick this up, even if it's outside your realm of taste. These guys are the real thing.