By Max Gelber, News correspondent

It’s fitting that Wolves in the Throne Room’s third record, Black Cascade, begins with the sounds of a rainstorm deep in the heart of the pacific Northwest. The band has always prided itself on being born out of the vast forests of Olympia, Wash. While most black metal artists feel the need to fill their music with mysticism, the occult and satanism, Wolves in the Throne Room instead choose to draw inspiration from the nature surrounding them.
The acoustic interludes that furbished Wolves’ old releases are but a distant memory on their latest record, as are the female vocals and romantic-era melodies that made their sophomore release, Two Hunters, a critical favorite. The atmosphere is still there, but this time around, it seems to take a back seat to more blistering riffs and relentless blast-beats. For a band trying to transcend their sound into something completely their own, it’s curious they would choose to eschew precedents and create a bare bones record.
With only four tracks, and clocking in at close to 50 minutes, there isn’t a lot of breathing room in digesting an album like this. The group does little to let the listener catch up, choosing to hit them with a wall of fuzzed out guitars and hollow drums before they even realized where it’s all coming from.
Though the band has worked hard to craft a certain kind of black metal that is strictly American, this series of songs owe a deep debt to the genre’s European forefathers who influenced this band. Black Cascade very well could be an homage to those who came before (Mayhem, Emperor, Darkthrone), but for a band barely 5 years old and still trying to craft their own personal style, it seems a bit premature.
Black Cascade does not beg for your attention ‘- rather, it demands it. This is not a record to put on in the background, because just when you think you understand where the band is going, you will find yourself lost once again, trying to catch up. This is a mountain of a record; the songs are long, and they take their time hitting a climax that seems like it will never come. That, however, is not a reason to dismiss a record of this nature, because when one does sit back and pay attention, one will be richly rewarded with a gripping and haunting atmosphere. The consistent alternations of ‘Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,’ the opening track’s main melody, though at times incredibly subtle, illustrates the band’s comfort. While an unassuming blur of guitars weaving through ‘Ahrimanic Trance’ on repeated plays, produces a heavy, soulful drone to help drive home frontman Nathan Weavers manic, cracked howls buried beneath the fuzz.
Recorded through an entirely analog set-up, on two-inch tape and through a mixing console built in 1973, Black Cascade both evokes and captures the organic roots of the early Norwegian black metal movement, and at moments, is too close for comfort. What made Wolves in the Throne Room’s debut and sophomore records so riveting was their ability to weave some of the most haunting melodies through their songs. They were able to bring depth to a genre that had been suffocating on formula for a good decade.
Black Cascade is the trio’s most straightforward effort, but that’s it. It would be wrong to call this effort by-the-numbers songwriting, but for a band that commanded attention so early on, it also wouldn’t be too far off. Is this a great black metal record? Without a doubt. But for a Wolves record, it’s far too safe.