Wolves in the Throne Room hailing from Olympia, Washington, are undoubtedly the flag-bearers of the so-called post-black metal scene. They describe their music themselves as "purifying black metal" or as "transformative black metal" too. The band earned their first stripes in the punk and squatter circles with which they still share a fanatical D.I.Y. ethic. Their form of black metal is formed by a hypnotic mix of, say, the manic aggression of early Mayhem, the slowcore of Neurosis and the ethereal mysteriousness of Dead Can Dance in its heyday. The band has been housed on the Southern Lord label of Greg Anderson - from Sunn O))) - since 2007, where they first released long-player ‘Two Hunters’ and in 2009 their latest masterpiece ‘Black Cascade’. Ideologically Wolves In The Throne Room like to keep themselves far removed from the standard satanic metal-clichés and are, on the other hand, followers of what they themselves call an eco-spiritual or eco-anarchistic philosophy. A Wolves In The Throne Room show is thus also more than a simple concert, it is an almost shamanistic ritual in which the musicians carry you away to a dark, Dantesque underworld. In the words of drummer Aaron Weaver: "It is a kind of existential horror, because we all feel there is something lurking beneath the surface, there is something primal underneath, something hidden. And that is why modern people are so neurotic a lot of the time, because we aren’t able to confront this darkness and fear and horror that is very much a natural part of life. We try, much like Shamans do, to delve in those places, those Lovecraftian, dark places, and come back changed and transformed and perhaps with a certain new knowledge."

Wolves in the Throne Room | NYC @ Club Europa | May 22 2009 from (((unartig))) on Vimeo.