Celestite, the fifth album from Wolves in the Throne Room, was a major departure for the Olympia, Washington, black metal group, foregrounding synths and drones and forsaking most traces of metal. Drummer Aaron Weaver reveled in the change, explaining how Detroit techno was black metal’s spiritual cousin and that their newly acquired gear didn’t always jibe with their rural surroundings. That proved to be a lot more interesting than the record itself, a poor imitation of German electronic music like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze saddled with a vague, esoteric veil that’s worn thin since their heyday. Thrice Woven is WITTR deboned. As welcome as it is that they’ve dropped Celestite’s pseudo-kosmische schtick, they’ve come back with a facsimile of what once was.
Returning to black metal lends a nostalgic feeling, though it’s unclear what exactly they’re nostalgic for. It’s not for Weakling, the San Francisco group that was their primary influence and for USBM as a whole, as WITTR have lost any warlike propulsion in their riffing. Most of Thrice Woven is spent crossing paths they’ve laid down and don’t seem enthusiastic to revisit. It’s still guitarist and vocalist Nathan Weaver’s show, even with the addition of Aldebaran guitarist Kody Keyworth. “Born From the Serpent’s Eye” starts off with some inkling a fire has returned, hinting at black thrash about three minutes in. But by “Angrboda,” Thrice Woven sounds tired, like WITTR imitating themselves. Even with choral vocal breaks, it’s doesn’t represent the intersection of sublime and feral that used to be natural. The album is dimmer than their previous works, but they’re not trying to return to USBM’s raw, buzzy, and confused beginnings. WITTR stood in opposition to rawness for the sake of rawness and to the bastardized European sounds that characterized so many American bands before them. At least, that’s what the optics suggested. Now, it’s not clear where they stand, or if they care about their own position.
Even their usual routine of bringing in notable West Coast musicians falls flat with Neurosis guitarist Steve Von Till contributing acoustic guitar and gravelly vocals on the doom-laden “The Old Ones Are With Us.” It’s their most high-profile guest contribution, and while he brings heft Thrice Woven needs, he can’t shift ennui on his own. Electronics, the focus of Celestite, are heavily scaled back, and in their supporting role they fail to uplift. There is a return to Celestite’s drone on “Fires Roar in the Palace of the Moon,” and noise is interspersed throughout “Angrboda,” but both songs’ synth work feels slight enough that if it were mixed out, it wouldn’t radically alter the songs. Faced between doubling down on a style that got a mixed reception or refining their old sound, WITTR instead go a middle route that’s almost as boring as it is reliable.
Thrice Woven lays out the harsh truth about WITTR: They’ve been eclipsed by the movement they spearheaded. USBM has expanded in many different directions, from injecting itself into the avant-garde to embracing America’s own folk music; one of their descendants is considered a capital-M Metal band that opens for Slipknot and Danzig. A decade ago, they released their second record, Two Hunters, where they strengthened the marriage of Weakling’s might with celestial beauty, coming out as a legitimate new black metal voice. “I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots” remains a modern classic for taking the Cascadian sound to heights only rivaled by Emperor and Viking-era Bathory, and there simply isn’t anything half as powerful on Thrice Woven. Innovators stop innovating at some point, and the strength of a metal band that’s at least a decade in comes from balancing small tweaks with consistency. They failed about reinventing themselves, and now they’ve failed at finding their way back.
