Black Cascade

Insound Staff Pick - 2009! It has been five years since Wolves in the Throne Room emerged from the rain-soaked Cascadian underground with a singular musical alchemy. Their new meditation, cryptically titled Black Cascade, will see them wholly transcend the limitations of the black metal label to be reborn as an entity entirely unto themselves. The energy conjured by the music is a distinctive manifestation of a personal vision that is nto beholden to the rules of any genre.

Black Cascade is characterized by a heavy and powerful analog sound and a deft touch with songwriting and arrangement. The crumbling roar of decidedly old-school tube amps unite with layers of mossy analog synthesizer and cataclysmic percussion. Blazing and crystalline Metal riffs slowly collapse and shift into ritualistic dirges that invoke endless rain falling upon the ancient cedars of the pacific North West. It is as if the instruments are controlled by shadowy and elemental forces of nature rather than three forest-dwellers from Olympia, Washington.