Conor Fynes
'2005 Demo' - Wolves In The Throne Room (3/10)
Another unpolished outing for this Olympia, Washington based black metal band, Wolves In The Throne Room's second demo shows something of a development in their sound. While two of the three tracks here would later be rerecorded for their debut record 'Diadem Of 12 Stars', this demo portrays the songs in all of their rawness, and as far as black metal goes, that is a give-and-take ordeal. While this has more of an organic feel than the debut, it suffers from the obvious problems that demos usually have, and although the songwriting here isn't even too cohesive to begin with, the noisy and muffled execution gets in the way.
Now, demos are not supposed to show a band in polished form or even give much of a finished product. On the contrary, a demo is only meant to hint at a band's potential. While Wolves In The Throne Room show their ambition quite well on this, and the previous demo, the album's severe execution problems get in the way of the compositions, which basically entail three very long tracks. While Wolves In The Throne Room do distinguish themselves for their long song lengths however, the sound of the music is fairly generic for the most part, and it would take until the debut for them to accentuate their more unique trends.
It's best to hear Wolves In The Throne Room anywhere from 'Diadem Of 12 Stars' afterwards; these demos are too much a mix of the good and bad to be worth much of a listen to anyone past hardcore fans of the band. The songs are too longwinded for the straightforward sound of the band at this point, simple as that.