Since their inception, Wolves In The Throne Room has made black metal music concerned with the natural world. The band has in the past referred to this as a primal, spiritual aspect to your music. In Part II of Richie H-R’s interview with Aaron Weaver, we learn what this means to him and his brother Nathan:
“Our music deals with the unseen world – the world behind the veil. I think all music does to a degree, but we do so very explicitly. It’s on the top of our minds when we make music, and of course that realm doesn’t have the same concepts and ideas and tropes and limitations that the regular world, the everyday world, does.”
To what extent is this “unseen world” an allegory, and what to extent is it objective truth?
“Well, it’s both. We’re modern people. Of course we can’t deny the reality of the scientific method, and we can’t deny the reality of the laws of physics; this is how the world works, this is the lens we have to look through. But for us as individuals, we also see another reality. We also see a world of energies, entities and spirits that’s just beyond. Shift your consciousness a little bit and this whole other vista opens up, this whole expanse. Think about an experience like… a lot of people today are experimenting with Ayahuaska, the South-American psychedelic brew. When people have these experiences they encounter entities, spirits and forces that feel very much outside themselves and it creates a really powerful ontological question – are there entities, are there spirits out there that have their own existence, their own agenda, or are these things just projections of our own psyches, things that are inside of ourselves, and we’re just looking inside at aspects of our consciousness projected? The answer is both. Or, perhaps more accurately, it doesn’t matter. Trying to pin it down, trying to say it is this or it is that, that’s not a useful stance for me. The important thing to me is experience, whether it’s a musical experience or going out and having an experience in the forest, living life, just being with it and taking it for what it is, letting it take you where it will.”
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