Band:	Wolves In The Throne Room
Album:	Thrice Woven
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	September 22, 2017
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. Born From The Serpent's Eye
02. The Old Ones Are With Us
03. Angrboda
04. Mother Owl, Father Ocean
05. Fires Roar In The Palace Of The Moon

It's been quite the journey for Wolves In The Throne Room over the past six years. After releasing the epic, brilliantly composed Celestial Lineage in 2011, they chose to follow it up not with more of their epic, transcendent black metal, but with a full fledged ambient album, the polarizing Celestite from 2014. Three years later, the band are going back to their roots, conjuring forth the black metal magic yet again.

But alas, if only one could really call it "magic." Such a label almost feels improper with Thrice Woven, for as the opening "Born From The Serpent's Eye" nears its completion, something begins to feel noticeably wrong here. Something is incomplete. Something is missing. Something just overall feels considerably different than previously, and not in a good way. Yes, it's black metal, alright, replete with thundering drums, pounding riffs, and the recognizable snarls of Nathan Weaver. And hell, around the 4 1/2 minute mark on the aforementioned track, we've even got some of those majestic, choir-like female vocals that enter the picture, exactly like on previous albums such as Two Hunters and Celestial Lineage So why exactly does the music on Thrice Woven feel so... off, as though it's really lacking much of an impact?

The songwriting. It's definitely the songwriting that has gone significantly downhill with this album. Really it's the guitars that draw the most attention. Previously on WITTR albums (and indeed, this was a big part of what made their music so alluring and mystifying), the Weavers would intricately play around each other, that is to say, one brother would sort of lay down some kind of foundational, chord-based rhythms, while the other weaved more dreamlike, airy melodies around him. This is simply not what happens on Thrice Woven, as the large majority of time the guitars are just playing the exact same thing, resulting in a blatantly different sound that's more monotonous, repetitive, and honestly just... not as interesting. Thankfully this rather dull approach is augmented slightly by some more epic, atmospheric breaks, such as the little acoustic guitar interlude on "The Old Ones Are With Us," or the opening of "Angrboda," but when these moments appear, since they often feel unsustained and even a little forced, the impression they leave is rather fleeting.

Production-wise too, Thrice Woven suffers from coming off as a bit too clean. This may come as a surprising comment, as WITTR never really employed that dirty "made in your uncle's wood shop garage" type of black metal production to begin with, but still, with earlier albums, especially the debut and Two Hunters, there was always a bit of a hazy, floating type feeling to the music. Somehow, some way, WITTR managed to shroud their music in a thick, Cascadian mist that worked wonders towards making it more dense and dreamlike. On Thrice Woven, this take to the production is for the most part gone, making the music feel more polished, and devoid of that dreamlike mist. This may seem like a small issue to raise, but a lot of the times with albums the presence or absence of a certain production aspect ends up making a huge difference. Listening to Thrice Woven, the music sounds a lot closer to some of the overproduced atmospheric black albums coming out these days than to the black metal that WITTR had been dishing out previously.

With Thrice Woven, it is almost impossible to not make a comparison to the earlier work of Wolves In The Throne Room, simply because the drop in quality from that work is so blatant. The heavier moments are less impressive, the atmospheric moments are less impressive, and on the whole the album feels more like a rather generic byproduct of contemporary atmospheric black metal than like a genuine WITTR album. Personally I find it very hard to believe that this is the best the band can produce, and for the moment I'll thus be sticking with their other five albums and hoping that whatever may come next manages to bring back the superior black metal that I know these guys are capable of.

A misstep, in my book, but one that I'm sure many others will enjoy. Listen here.