****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
CELESTIAL LINEAGE (2011) was the first WITTR album I heard, and TWO HUNTERS (2007) is roughly similar. They share the same basic sound and structure, featuring Jessika Kenney's "goddess" vocals interspersed with Nathan's black metal vocals. BLACK CASCADE from 2009 stands apart from the other two albums in that it has no female vocals. It is also harder-edged, and I find it to be excellent. There are those who slammed this album for a lack of internal variety. BLACK CASCADE is a very intense onslaught, four long tracks, which might not appeal to those who prefer 3-minute pop songs or who have short attention spans, true. But if you think YANQUI U.X.O. is at least as good a GY!BE album as LIFT YR. SKINNY FISTS..., despite having less internal variety, then you might think BLACK CASCADE is excellent too.Nathan and Aaron Weaver are Wolves In The Throne Room (WITTR), an excellent black metal band from Washington State. Musically, theirs is a very psychedelic metal. There is no lyric sheet with BLACK CASCADE, and the metal vocals are indecipherable, but the band's message is one of reverence for the Earth. I discovered this band following my discovery of Agalloch, and they convey a similar pantheist/neopagan vision. The Weaver brothers and families practice organic farming on land on the Olympic peninsula and are ready for the collapse of industrial society.Like Agalloch, I find WITTR to be an inspiration to do all we can to prevent the further destruction of the Earth and all the sentient beings with whom we share it. Unlike Agalloch, WITTR actually *was* created partly out of Earth First! activism, specifically Nathan's experience at an EF! rendezvous in 2002.
