As much as one can call anything associated with black metal a crossover record, Two Hunters-- the sprawling second album from Wolves in the Throne Room-- was just that. Extolled by critics, embraced by indie rock kids, appreciated by metal legions, Wolves' overwhelming crescendos and glowing decrescendos, beautiful and brutal, spoke as much to worshippers of Emperor's Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk as acolytes of Radiohead's Kid A. The band offered an enigmatic allure, too, speaking of its communal farm outside of Olympia, Wash. And Wolves' espousal of a pagan approach to black metal-- a genre long bound to an upside-down cross-- was refreshing. So purists be damned: Two years ago, Wolves in the Throne Room offered a rendezvous for two very unlikely demographics by aiming extreme in several directions.
Whatever bridges Wolves might have built in 2007 are mostly a memory this year, though: The EP Malevolent Grain and the LP Black Cascade disassemble the integrated power of Two Hunters and its predecessor, Diadem of 12 Stars, by plucking the black-metal sections from their former surrounding swells and stretching their ends until what's left feels mostly like a flatline. Imagine cutting cheap wine with water and trying to get drunk: It's unnecessary work for little payoff.
Excepting the first side of Malevolent Grain, each of the six Wolves cuts is a smear, smoothing black metal's disruptive bursts into 10-14 minute trances that slowly, sparingly shift in meter and volume. The idea-- to create a stable atmosphere from music that traditionally gnashes any space it fills-- is more interesting than its execution. For instance, "Hate Crystal", Malevolent Grain's B-side, is an 11-minute march that opens at full blast and ends mostly at the same clip. The guitars move in orthodox progressions, and the drums steadily chew from beneath, adding variety with the occasional extra cymbal splash or snare drop. Only the song's understated coda-- where the parts fall out of lockstep and apart from one another without fading out-- offers intrigue. Like William Basinski's The Disintegration Loop I-IV, the object's corrosion is more interesting than the object itself. Also, that's not a compliment.
All of Black Cascade pounds away with a similar notion for four tracks and 50 minutes, offering four black metal tides that occasionally shift into some texturally bankrupt, wintry drone. Separated from its once-intriguing surroundings, Wolves' music feels listless and dull-- music doing its best to get by on size, not strength or sound. It's not compelling. At least it's listenable.
Side A of Malevolent Grain isn't: Released in America as a limited run of black vinyl and in Europe as a set of 700 12" picture discs that sold out almost immediately, Malevolent Grain is barely worth the Google search it takes to find free, high-quality rips. The EP splits the band's powers between the record's halves, so that the heavy stuff comes on the B-side. The A-side, then, is a workshop for Jamie Meyers, this effort's token female. She possesses less nuance than Jessica Kinney, the Two Hunters vocalist who seemed so well suited for those tunes. The three-piece rock rumble suggests an eventual eruption, but the band simply varies its speed, volume, and density, lashing repeatedly against a few notes and themes. Maybe that sounds nice, but-- left alone above it all, minus a structural or sonic foil-- Meyers sounds like Evanescence leading a tribute to Enya. It's a 13-minute cringefest.
Perhaps these releases are concessions to the difficulty of climbing from a tour van nightly and recreating such complex music onstage. Then, of course, there's the frustration of disappointed fans who expect it all and get only the band's heavier tendencies with the price of admission. That's fair enough, I suppose. But must a live show meet a record's standards? And should a performance dictate a record by a band that once took such risks? Indeed, the live experience is an extemporaneous one-- here tonight, restarted tomorrow. But a great record, one hopes, can be its own statement, something that lives forever in a world of its own design. With its deity talk and complete grandeur, Two Hunters worked like that. It was adventurous, engaged, imaginative. At their best, though, Malevolent Grain and Black Cascade, are just sort of there, kicking up a thin cloud of dust they're hoping you'll perceive as pitch black.
