Genre: Black Metal

01 Dea Artio
02 Vastness and Sorrow
03 Cleansing
04 I will Lay Down my Bones Among the Rocks and Roots

So here it is, the long awaited sophomore album from Wolves in the Throne Room. I don't say “long awaited” in sense of time though as it has actually only been a year and a half since the initial release of their debut effort Diadem of 12 Stars on Vendlus Records. Thus, I say “long awaited” in the sense that our hearts as listeners have been anticipating this remarkable piece of aural beauty for the entirety of time since the first release. Wolves in the Throne Room play a style of blackened shoegazer, The music resembles that of David Galas mixed with some softer Projekt artists like Tearwave or Love Spirals Downwards. You shouldn't go about making up your mind on this album based on that statement though, as there is nothing even remotely ''gothy'' about this album. However, nothing I could possibly say here could lead anyone to not give this album a chance. Mine is one of the last in a long line of top notch reviews, nearly all full of nothing but praise for this incredible new arrival into the black metal realm, something the genre has needed for so long now as a boost away from its current status as a rotten corpse of its once-self.

This doesn't go to say that the black metal scene is all bad or that this is completely new. Bands like Xasthur have been playing this style for a great number of years now, just on a much more unaccepted level by the mainstream audience. This has to do with everything from production to song content and other such important issues of a record. Wolves in the Throne Room have found a nearly perfect atmosphere for being able to allow black metal to reach into other areas of listening on a more mainstream influence. Perhaps the word 'mainstream' is being overused a bit much here because this is indeed still black metal. While not present on all tracks, it is apparent and obvious. There is a much more depressing atmosphere here, not like that of 'depressive black metal' in general, but of a strange style. This is the beautiful side of depression. While Leviathan and Abyssic Hate will paint a more hateful picture of what depression is, followed through by their self-righteous misanthropy for the world's population, Wolves in the Throne Room seem to have developed the despair illusion of depressive black metal. Everything within Two Hunters is full of a type of truth and understanding; something that reaches out to people rather than pushes them away with naïve hatred. This album is an apparition whose cold clammy hands reach out to you and grasp hold of your heart through your body. It is warmth through coldness. There is the natural organic twinge that they have thrown in to the mix as well, facing mankind on their own to show us what we've become. These are three young men whom are a warning from the Earth herself. They force us to see our past, what mankind once was, and the beauty that it held on that throne before human progression sent us spiraling downwards into the mass bubble of fuck all that we've become today.

It’s hard for me to personally believe that this world can be saved or that its even worth being saved, at least mankind's part of it. But it’s true, that we have destroyed the beauty that we were given a long time ago. Wolves in the Throne Room seem almost like a divine message to me. They have a sort of divine rapture in their music that is inexplicable and that I really cannot do much justice towards with these meaningless words. I suppose we are the wolves in our own throne room. At one time we held our throne and we destroyed it with our own wrath, and around us the castle crumbles a little more every day...the question is when does the collapse come? When does it bury us all in the rubble we created? I suppose if our existence couldn't be beautiful, our end will be. To me, there is no truth greater than that.