Band:	Wolves In The Throne Room
Album:	Crypt Of Ancestral Knowledge
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	September 2023

01. Beholden To Clan
02. Twin Mouthed Spring
03. Initiates Of The White Hart
04. Crown Of Stone

A bite-sized chunk of ethereal atmospheres.

It's interesting to trace Wolves In The Throne Room's trajectory and how they tried to break the mold of what made their first three releases such undisputed masterpieces. Their 2010s material saw both a move towards spreading the runtime across more tracks, and towards taking the sound in either a more ambient direction, like on the Celestite detour towards a completely non-metallic sound, or towards an even more straight-forward melodic black metal sound like on Primordial Arcana. A lot of it also seems to stem from how Wolves In The Throne Room seemed to shift towards being a fuller band rather than just the Weaver brothers' project. Live guitarist Colin Keyworth officially joined the band and started getting songwriting credits on Primordial Arcana. Live bassist Galen Baudhuin might not be an official member yet, but he performed on Primordial Arcana as well and seems to have a bigger role on Crypt Of Ancestral Knowledge too.

A lot of what made Primordial Arcana feel that direct were the shorted tracks and the more band-focused approach, something that's pretty much the case for Crypt Of Ancestral Knowledge too, at least on paper. This is a twenty minutes long EP where the longest track doesn't even reach seven minutes, so short tracks is still the name of the game. However there's something very specific about Crypt Of Ancestral Knowledge's structure, namely that the first two tracks are atmospheric black metal, while the last two tracks are ambient. That alone could turn this review dangerously close to being a track-by-track one, since there's a bit of a difference even in between the tracks of the same genre, but I'll try to keep things on a general note.

The atmospheric black metal tracks do have quite a bit in common with the Primordial Arcana sound, though not enough to really feel like they'd be leftovers from that session, with the biggest difference being how much more they dive into being as atmospheric as can be. There's a strong ambient feeling within these tracks as well, some of it interwoven some applied on top of the actual black metal, reaching some very Summoning-esque vibes with some pretty interesting dynamics for how short the songs are by atmospheric black metal standards. The ambient tracks feel quite different from the more progressive electronic leanings of Celestite, the most obvious point of comparison, with a stronger dungeon synth / dark folk leaning this time around. The strings and synths work together to create a pretty fantastical medieval sounding backdrop that wouldn't be amiss on something like The Witcher, with the synths especially creating a very wintery feel.

I appreciate how much Crypt Of Ancestral Knowledge feels packed and varied even with a relatively short runtime, and how it doesn't simply continue any of their previous sounds regardless of how familiar it still feels.