Wolves in the Throne Room
Two Hunters

Perhaps the most evocative moments of Black Metal are those when, after overcoming the initial seconds of instinctive repulsion to sounds that so blatantly throw you into a wild and insane trance, one yields to movements that sublimates the very fury that initially engulfed you. Indeed, one realizes that this fury is the necessary key to unlocking a sublime otherwise inaccessible. A kind of "esoteric initiation," in short.

The "Wolves in the Throne Room" have certainly grasped this, as is clear from their album "Two Hunters."

Drawing from their environmentalist imagery, in this work they have sung of the devastation of Mother Earth and the tormented urge towards her purification and rebirth.

And it is precisely on a desolate land that the album opens, a vision whose ancient fertility only painful memory can recall (the title of the track is "Dea Artio", apparently a Celtic goddess of hunting and abundance).

After the introduction, the album showcases old-school Black Metal sounds, which draw their essence not so much from a self-destructive hate, but from a delicate and benign beauty that permeates almost every note of this work, surfacing explicitly in female form in "Cleansing" and in the airy lullaby that closes the album.

Even in the violence of the perfect ride "Vastness and Sorrow," what is expressed if not the anguish felt in the face of the inexorable catastrophe that strikes against what one loves most?

To resurrect the ancient lost beauty, it is necessary to traverse the darkness of horror and finally of death: this is what the Wolves in the Throne Room have played in a way that may not shine for originality, but that certainly represents one of the highest and most mature points of Black Metal.