The Dream was dead, torn apart by the Furies, and nothing was left of him anymore. She had seen many dead. Let's say that, if she took a step, it was to take someone away from their loved ones, so she knew how it felt. Yet he was now gone, and although, as she well knew, soon a new king would take the reins of that mourning realm, something inside her was missing.

She descended from the hill and walked into the dense forest that lay at its base. As she ventured deeper, words of a song echoed in her head, though she couldn't remember where she had heard it, probably something written by one of the people she had recently visited. With each step, she felt the forest closing in on her, becoming suffocating, slowing her movements with gnarled roots sprouting from nowhere; she felt the branches turn into thorns, closing in menacingly towards her.

The madness of the Furies lingered in the air, unsatisfied with sealing their revenge in blood, they wanted to go further, tearing apart even those who had disrespected them just moments before. She was unfazed. Queen of queens, she looked up: the stars shone in the sky, but two of them shone brighter than the others: it was a light she knew well, one she had seen in the eyes of those who were no longer there. She raised her hand, touched them with her fingertips, brought them to herself, and suddenly the glow lit up that thorny clearing. When her eyes could readjust to the darkness around her, there was only a clearing: the forest behind her, the sky above her head. She smiled, with a gesture opposite to the one she had made before, released the stars that came to her aid, which joined the others, arranging themselves in a circle, almost as if they were a necklace. Then she smiled, a somewhat bitter smile, her eyes welled up with tears, but it was nothing: a breeze whisked them from her eyelids, a breeze carried her away, back to her kingdom.

The diadem is composed of twelve stars, whose nature can be distilled and fused into four long movements, an icy and melancholic black metal, ancestral and fierce, full of nuances and with nascent raw potential that will soon explode and materialize first in the faces of two hunters, then in the strength of a murky waterfall, and finally dematerialize to return to their place in the firmament (and then, who knows). To the roughness of black is added doom slowdowns and atmospheric parts full of magic, which give a sense of mystical suspension and rituality that our own know well how to exploit to enchant listeners. And in hindsight, knowing what will come later, one cannot help but love this work of the Wolves in the Throne Room.

Tracklist

01   Queen of the Borrowed Light (12:58)

02   Face in a Night Time Mirror, Part 1 (13:20)

03   Face in a Night Time Mirror, Part 2 (13:58)

04   (A Shimmering Radiance) Diadem of 12 Stars (20:22)

Loading comments  slowly