By Tony Papanikolas
The world of rock music is full of “wolf bands”, but few live up to their feral moniker. Steppenwolf’s John Kay, for example, claims that he was born to be wild –a promising start– but writes lyrics about magic carpets. Not very wolf-like. Likewise, Wolf Parade betrays a dangerous ignorance of its namesake (wolves are easily spooked; incorporating them into a parade would be disastrous.) And then there’s Wolves in the Throne Room, the enigmatic Olympia, WA outfit responsible for some of the most cosmic black metal ever produced outside of Scandinavia.
If the crowd at Slim’s was any indication, Wolves’ fan base has extended beyond the immediate metal set. Metal fans made up a good percentage of the audience but there was also a sizeable punk contingent, as well as the requisite handful of hipster-types (also, a headbanging dude in an incongruous business suite, my personal favorite.) The crowd was still relatively thin when opening act Ninth Moon Black began playing, but receptive nonetheless. I’m a sucker for visual aids at shows, and the psychedelic black and white swirls projected behind Ninth Moon Black provided a neat visual counterpoint to the group’s ambient instrumentals.
Minsk has a musical sensibility similar to Ninth Moon Black, but with significantly more dynamic instrumentation. Minsk’s pounding rhythm governs how heavy a given song will be, steering the guitar and seasick keyboard lines to thrilling crescendos. If Minsk didn’t go into their set backed by a strong fan presence, it certainly ended with one. I’m kind of glad I hadn’t heard the band prior to the show; going into its set without any expectations gave me the freedom to be carried rag doll-like wherever the disorienting grooves saw fit.
At around 11:00, the pre-headliner buzz set in. People filed from the bar and merch tables towards the stage. Final beers were pounded. Roadies lit candles on opposite sides of the drum kit, which security promptly extinguished. The mood was set, as they say. The stage filled with artificial smoke –that glorious signifier of eminent black metal bad-assery – and Wolves in the Throne Room launched into their appropriately titled first song, “Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog.” Trying to articulate the live sound of a band as original as Wolves in the Throne Room necessitates a shit-ton of adjectives.
Though firmly entrenched in the lo-fi aesthetic of black metal, the band’s compositions can be down-right labyrinthine. Nathan Weaver and Will Lindsay produce a symphony’s worth of nuances with their guitars, crafting slabs of distortion that systematically reveal themselves to be pieces of an overarching melody. As the melodies reach their climax, the songs untangles into an abrupt moment of clarity that reel ominously before re-submerging the wanderer back into the mire. Don’t think the band will provide any help in navigating through its forest of sound, either; throughout the entire six song set, not a single syllable of crowd banter was heard. Wolves simply took the stage, started playing, and walked off without even acknowledging the audience’s existence. How awesome is that?
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