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Wolves In The Throne Room, Tweak Bird @ Hare and Hounds, Birmingham |
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Wolves In The Throne Room
Tweak Bird
@
Hare and Hounds, Birmingham
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If you think it’s humid out, wait until you step inside the confines of this venue. Currently, a very eager – and sweaty – crowd is awaiting perhaps one of the best black metal bands in recent years. But first up, the distinctly non- kvlt Tweak Bird. Despite the lack of menace in comparison to the headliners, they’re not without charms themselves, amid the stripped down stoner rock poundings and the space age circa 1950 blips and blops. With pared down drum kit, munchkin harmony vocals and a truly strange set of guitar tunings that ensure the tidy two-piece remain heavy without the need of a bassist, every song gets treated with whoops and cheers. Set closer ‘Spaceship’ draws heavily from past tourmates Melvins and infuses said influence with a jovial bouncing groove that certainly catches the collective ear of the sweaty rabble.
By this point, the upstairs room now resembles a sauna used as a football changing room. But with the addition of a few banners, a bundle of twigs, some candles and an American black metal three piece, it becomes the most atmospheric place in the universe. Hardly the most diffident band on record, live Wolves In The Throne Room, with the tactile feedback of an immense PA, are utterly, terrifyingly good. Opener ‘Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog’, from last year’s ‘Black Cascade’ album, showcases the true power of black metal; the way it can draw you into a dark psychedelic netherworld. Although WITTR’s vision of the world is not nihilistically bleak, it simply reflects the harsh reality of nature, shorn of the expectation of human values. ‘I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots’ is quite simply a masterpiece in words that can’t described. Sheer feral majesty from start to finish. |
Review by Steve Jones
Wolves In The Throne Room
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Live Reviews 
