Review: Wolves In The Throne Room "Primordial Arcana"

Primordial Arcana is an album that flows so effortlessly between tracks that it is nearly half over by the time you realize it. The transitions, where the discordant and the serene meet, are so important to how immersive the album becomes - not only in scope, or size, or brightness, but in theme. In the second track, for example, there is a persistent plucking sound (banjo, or nylon-stringed guitar, or something I can’t place immediately) that weaves the sections together if only because it is present, and when it goes, discordance seeps in and the journey darkens. But then it returns, and the rhythm settles into a catchy groove, and the song stabilizes. But it’s not just this simple pluck, the transitions throughout the album are designed in such a way that make the path unknowingly easy for the listener.

Returning to Thrice Woven, Wolves In The Throne Room’s last full length album, the transitions were not as smooth. They weren’t bad or wrong or incredibly jarring, but it definitely felt like the precise cohesion of Primordial Arcana (especially when you compare a track like “Spirit of Lightning” to “Born From The Serpents Eye,” which I feel are similar in structure and epic scope). They feel blunt and shocking, as if the discordance between the brutal and trashing blast beat segments were at war with the quiet, slower sections. This is not a problem, but a key difference that struck me as I travelled between the albums. 

The mixing (including sound and tone design), which the band took on entirely in their own studio for the first time, is so much clearer than previous releases. There is a classic feel to some of the instrument intonations, especially in tracks like “Masters of Rain and Storm,” where the synthesizers remind of early For All Tid by Dimmu Borgir (still one of my favorite and most frequently returned to albums), or on “Primal Chasm (Gift of Fire),” where a catchy, thrashy guitar riff is purpose-built for headbanging for hours. Throughout many segments of the album, which I grew to see as many movements in the same palette, I was amazed by how much space and diversity there was in the mix. It’s huge, but also clear. Each track feels like it grew from the bones of what came before it, but is still entirely in it’s own carve out on the album.

Kody Keyworth, who has been in the band for a while but is not often involved in the writing process from the start of an album, brings a large amount of influence to the overall cosmic feel to the album. The energy is different - not only in the transitions and the mixing, which play a big role I’m sure, but in the way the synthesizers and other elements are fronted in the composition. Celestite, from 2014, was primarily a dungeon synth album from Wolves In The Throne Room, but for me Primordial Arcana is the full picture for how those interests and ideas can be integrated into something that feels classically beautiful in the way For All Tid does, or Il Etait Une Forêt… by Gris.

So often new Black Metal falls into a compositional rut, especially in the DSBM space that I often find myself drawn to, where the riffs go on forever. There’s a special kind of conceptual and physical suffering that is meant to be implied - the riff is so brutal that it must go on until the point you just can’t fucking stand it anymore, and then the track breaks into the halftime beat and it’s epic. This often works, but when you listen to as much black metal as I do, it gets very exhausting. Primordial Arcana does a lot of work to make sure this never happens. By varying the compositions and by keeping each section only as long as it is needed, the songs move with emotion and character - they rise further than you think they can, but they also fall quickly into silence. A guitar heavy, blasting section will often transition into something bigger and more melodic without losing its fierceness.

In “Masters of Rain and Storm,” which is immediately furious, there is a change about every 30 seconds (even if it is small), until the first real breakdown happens at two minutes. Everything falls away and is built back again slowly. Big crashes. Guitar riff. Nice Bass line. Then, when the double bass comes back things fall away again and the synth takes over. There is almost no guitar at all. It’s very quiet. But no energy is lost! It’s wild. Yet, it feels cohesive, even when the neofolk-esque acoustic guitar takes the forefront at the sixth minute, and again things fall away into a cavernous stillness. It feels like one emotional stake in the earth built up around this album.

This emotionality is key to what makes the album feel like it fits within the Cascadian Black Metal sub genre, where the post-metal and shoegaze influences bring space and diversity, and allow the album to expand further. Ritualistic Black Metal, Dungeon Synth, Cascadian Black Metal, whatever it is, I love it. It will always core me out and bring me back to life. The album ends with an instrumental track, “Eostre,” where the running water leads us out of the forest, into the mountains, and further on our journey, away.

In the “Wolves In The Throne Room recommends” section of the Bandcamp page, is Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper. A perfect pairing for anyone new to either band.

Primordial Arcana is out now on Relapse Records.