LIVE REVIEW: Wolves In The Throne Room @ The Globe, Cardiff
The last time WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM stepped on UK shores was in December last year, not long after playing to a packed Roundhouse at Desertfest earlier in the year, so it was about time the Washington progressive black metal powerhouse returned to bless fans with a dose of their trademark heavy, deafening noise.
The Globe in Cardiff is a great venue for any metal band with solid acoustics and a wide layout, the capacity of around 350 could be seen as intimate when compared the some of the shows and festivals the band have previously played but WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM took full advantage of this space during their set, filling the stage and airless room with their dark presence.
Before the band entered the stage, a long drawn out ambient intro played for what seemed like forever, foreshadowing the hum and vibrations they were about to unleash on the room, an introduction Sunn 0))) would have been proud of. After the long hum of an intro was coming to an end, the stage was populated by a lone man who proceeded to light a bundle of sage and blow it over the crowd filling the room. This wasn’t a gig, this was becoming a ritualistic performance, an experience that would linger in the audience’s mind for a long while.
All of a sudden, the hum stopped and the ear crushing black metal began, bringing the crowd out of the trance like state that partially was down to the blistering heat currently sweeping the country making every leather wearing metal head weep. Opening with Thuja Magus Imperium, from 2011’s Celestial Lineage, was a fitting opener to throw any potential first listeners attending the show straight into the sounds they would hear for the next hour and from there, the band played a somewhat eclectic set list spanning three albums; Celestial Lineage, Two Hunters and their most recent record, Thrice Woven.
The sound quality was great throughout the show, as mentioned the acoustics in the venue were top notch and the band played to this making the relentless blastbeats and riffs merge into one drawn out tune that didn’t stop for over an hour. It’s worth mentioning the intense heat in the venue, Cardiff was almost 30 degrees on the day and despite this, the band didn’t appear to let it affect their performance in the slightest. From the moment they got on stage to the moment they finished, every member put in maximum effort and wanted fans to experience them in their rawest, most energetic form. Not much can be said for crowd interaction during the show as is tradition for black metal, but we’re sure nobody in the venue would have had it any other way as there was rarely an interruption one song flowed into the next with perfect energy.
All in all, as they have done so many times in recent years, WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM blew the crowd away at The Globe. The band clearly came out with a purpose, that being to show the world their personal take on progressive black metal, a genre sometimes not given the right level of appreciation outside certain countries. They played harder than a lot of people would expect given the conditions and brought with them a setlist that would only further solidify their ever growing fan base, showing the world that you can take a genre so heavily rooted in its ways as black metal is and make it your own.
Rating: 8/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action from Matt Brown here:
