Wind's Poem

It's official: black metal has become hip. Arcade Fire/ Final Fantasy violinist has been known to sport a Mayhem shirt on stage, The Mountain Goats' frontman John Darnielle having his own column dedicated to all things grim and frostbitten, and even mainstream alt-country stalwart Ryan Adams name-checking Xasthur in the pages of the New York Times. The latest indie musician to out himself as a slave of the one with horns is Mount Eerie mainman Phil Elvrum, who's been producing droney lo-fi folk like a sludge Bonnie Prince Billy for years. However, Elvrum's always had an eccentricity to him, his previous outfit The Microphones often being esoteric to the point that no one but Elvrum knew what on earth he was on about. In the run-up to Wind's Poem, Elvrum was touting it as his “black metal record” and displaying his enthusiasm for Xasthur's Subliminal Genocide to Pitchfork Media. Wind's Poem certainly isn't a black metal record, but it's certainly rife with black metal influence. The opening Wind's Dark Poem opens with buzzing guitars and programmed blasting, proving that Elvrum, at the very least, knows what he's doing. He doesn't try to scream, however, instead marrying the blizzard riffs with his deep, suicidal moan of a singing voice. And where Wind's Poem really succeeds is how it captures the bleak, desolate atmosphere of black metal. The title track is followed up by Through The Trees, a 12-minute, obviously Burzum inspired piece of shifting keyboard drones, and throughout the record, Elvrum mines the same earthy, nature-obsessed lyrical territory as the Cascadian black metallers with whom he shares his geographical location (and with whom he apparently stands in good stead, playing a prestigious hometown show with Wolves In The Throne Room). Indeed, Wind's Poem is unquestionably authentic sounding. Strip away Elvrum's voice from the folkier tracks and you're left with what sounds like early Ulver at their most subdued. Elsewhere, the riffs rear their head again on the likes of The Hidden Stone, this time adopting the funereal pace of say, Striborg. The kvlter among you will describe Elvrum as some sort of poser, but bar the twang of Americana in his voice Wind's Poem would fit nicely next to an Agalloch record in your collection. The brooding, solitary atmosphere? The preoccupation with nature? Often esoteric lyrical themes? All present and accounted for. The record even ends with Stone's Ode, Elvrum quoting from Burzum's Dunkelheit and I suppose the song is a sort-of reworking of Varg Vikernes' defining moment. Phil Elvrum gets black metal. He gets that it's all about that sinister, creeping sense of dread, and on a cold winter night the record takes on a haunting quality that'll stay with the listener long after it draw to a close. It's difficult to say whether Wind's Poem can truly crossover into a metal audience- it's possibly too entrenched in folk for that, and it might be too droning and one-note to truly make waves in the world of indie rock (for black metal fans, of course, this comes with the territory). But in a world where metal often seems to be worn as a superficial accessory, Phil Elvrum's shown that his understanding goes so much deeper than that. Possibly the best black metal album ever that isn't actually black metal.