This band, man.
I kind of already lost my train of thought about what the fuck I was going to say, so I’ll start with this: I don’t really know what to think about this band. I mean, hey man, if you take the discography by itself, the metal is pretty sick! And I guess that’s what’s the most important thing, after all.
Still, you probably already know that that’s just about the least fucking interesting thing a guy like me or a slut/guy like you might be thinking, you know what I mean? So okay let’s just be completely fucking gay and give two shits about what Wolves in the Throne Room “actually” means. Okay. Okay.
So this is a black metal band. The weird shit is that there are like, I dunno, five(?) black metal bands that non-metally people have heard about or whatever, and they’re mostly all due to coverage in Vice Magazine. Not that that’s a completely bad thing, but fuck it, let’s just say it’s a bad thing because maybe it is and I don’t know what I’m talking about (if you were wondering, the bands are Darkthrone, this band, Dimmu Borgir [do they count?], Burzum, and Gorgoroth). So okay, in all reality, black metal appeals to maybe like 3% of the population. It’s kind of evil-ish, so religious people generally hate it, and it’s kind of right-wing as well, so anyone with a level head pretty much has nothing to gain from it. Also, the songs are way too long sometimes, and a lot of the time they’re shitty and monotonous. It’s like driving to my parents’ hometown, except black instead of brown and cornfields. Anyhow, yeah, so black metal isn’t for everyone. Weirdly though, Wolves in the Throne Room kind of is.
Here’s a story! My friend Josh bought that photography book that Vice (SURPRISE) published called True Norwegian Black Metal, and basically it showed all of the Norwegian dudes that you’ve heard about looking like fat juggalos in the woods—or basically just normal juggalos. But yeah, he had this book, and I was like “Oh, that book,” and he was like “Yeah man. Have you heard of this band called Wolves in the Throne Room?” The band isn’t in the book at all—they’re just also members of the genre.
Kind of a bullshit story, but I meant it to illustrate how WITTR (fuck typing out that name again, GOD) are weirdly accessible. If you weren’t aware, WITTR is American, and they don’t really align neatly with the established black metal norms in that they’re leftists as if it fucking matters to anyone who just likes how black metal sounds and not some gay “ideology” that a band thinks you should follow because WHO THE FUCK CARES ANYWAY. Naturally, clueless fucking reviewers at places like Pitchfork think this is a big fucking deal, because it “challenges” what black metal is “supposed” to be about, as if that means anything at all. Well guess what, assholes: it doesn’t challenge basically everyone else other than allowing people to see who can pretend to “GET IT” the longest before someone puts on the newest Beirut record. Oh, and the new WITTR record kind of sucks, so there’s that too.
I like WITTR, but I hate people who try to like them. And finally, FUCK LITURGY. Jesus christ, talk about the shittiest, most boring psudeointellectuals on the planet. “Transcendental black metal”? Get the hell out of here. It’s about being evil, and that’s it, so FUCK YOU.
Also, I like Beirut too, so let’s stop trying to concentrate hard and just have a good time, okay? Okay, cool!