Four years since the wolf commune have sent a full length out into the wider world and then, in effect the excellent Thrice Woven was kind of a ‘return’ album after a strange period for them with departures, returns and a weird, unsatisfying stab at being Vangelis. I believe though that few were expecting surprises with this album, and most people who have heard Wolves In The Throne Room in their rightful setting have made their minds up and Promordial Arcana will change no minds there. The followers will enjoy it, and the haters will be wrong as usual hehe..

It makes reviewing them difficult so I am going to pretend that anyone reading this either has missed them, or hasn’t heard them for a decade.

‘Mountain Magick’ has a slow, atmospheric build up, a melody and keyboard sound that kind of reminds me of old Cold Meat Industry stuff before that Cascadian riff style blossoms out and the snarled vocals bring the primeval sound. This is core Wolves In The Throne Room; it effortlessly conjures darkness and nature in it’s raw, a sense of the ancient and the primitive and the awe of standing in some natural cathedral. There will always be those who maintain, mostly because of some fans they attract, that WITTR are not black metal, but they are. This is as black metal as Winterfylleth, as any of the pagan bands who embrace the teeth and claws of nature. It also happens to be beautiful and evocative. ‘Spirit Of Lightning’ is initially softer, a rolling kind of sound with voices that echo like winds whispering through chasms, caves and titan woods, but it opens out into a harsher sound. There’s always a sense of longing that rises in me when I hear them, in the same way that Fellwarden can make me feel. They pull you back to the land and away from the lights and plugs and wires of the city. Back to the moment, away from the day.

This is how they sound. They bring an air of reverence, a deep vein of spirituality and a mastery of that wall of sound riff. The can, as in ‘Primal Chasm (Gift Of Fire)’ surge into a sound as harsh as any you could want, but their movement between that and more introspective moments is, by now, immaculate. The transition is perfect. For every soft moment there will soon be the bite, the claws and the melody rising up on the shoulders of the riff. ‘Masters Of Rain And Storm’ also showcases their ability to find lower gears, a dark, choppy stomp that summons the titular storm on black, billowing riff clouds before the aftermath ‘Eostre’ settles the world into the aftermath.

I would say this is an album perhaps of greater focus than Thrice Woven, the transitions seamless and the idea of the passing elements that reach deep into the stone and forest landscape painted with as deft a hand as they have ever managed.

It’s as good a place to start as any, if they are new. If you are a fan, it is up there with Black Cascade for me. If you’re a hater; well I simply smile and say “so it goes” as for the rest of this is atmospheric black metal by auteurs. Music that seeps into every pore.

(8.5/10 Gizmo)

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https://wolvesinthethroneroom.bandcamp.com/album/primordial-arcana