Early reviews. Based on 7 critics so far. The Breakdown will settle as more outlets weigh in.
By the numbers: Scores ran from 50 (Spectrum Culture) to 90 (Distorted Sound).
| The gist | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Distorted Sound | 9/10 | 90 | “Itay Gilad reviews the new album from Wolves In The Throne Room!” | |
| Sonic Perspectivesby Jonathan Smith | 8.6/10 | 86 | 2021 | “Pondering metaphysics from the forest gloom. Often times the nature of a given craft will be determined by its surroundings, and this is doubly so in the case of the…” |
| Beats Per Minute | 84% | 84 | “Music News, Reviews, Interviews, Videos and MP3s” | |
| PopMatters | 8/10 | 80 | “Wolves in the Throne Room is without a doubt one of the leading black metal bands of the current US wave. Since the release of their 2006 debut album, A” | |
| Under the Radar | 7.5/10 | 75 | “It’s fitting, perhaps, that in a year filled with lots of great releases in USBM (U.S. black metal), and especially so-called “atmospheric” black metal in particular (Panopticon, Woe, Deafheaven), Wolves…” | |
| musicOMHby Sam Shepherd | 3.5/5 | 70 | 2017 | “Album number six from Wolves In The Throne Room sees the band returning with a sense of freshness. The trilogy of albums that began with Two Hunters and” |
| Spectrum Culture | 50/100 | 50 | “Primordial Arcana’s direction is spelled out in its title; it is both prehistoric and antiquated, focusing on mysticism. It delivered on its foreboding fortune, like an Oracle divulging a bad…” |
Would you spin it again?
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How the Breakdown works
Every outlet’s score is converted to 0–100 (2/5 is 40, 5.9/10 is 59, a B+ is 88) and averaged. Grades follow the B-Side scale: A is 90–100, B 80–89, C 70–79, D 60–69, F below 60. Approval is the share of critics who scored it 75 or higher; the Breakdown shows green at 75 and up, red below. Divisiveness asks a different question: not how many critics liked it, but how close their scores are to each other. Five critics who all give it 50 are Unanimous, even though none of them liked it. The labels run Unanimous, Broad agreement, Some debate, Divided, and Contentious. Replay rate comes from listeners, not critics: yes counts fully, a few tracks counts half, no counts zero. The gist quotes each outlet’s own summary of its review. Published is the date on the review itself, read from the outlet’s page, so you can see whether an album’s reputation came at release or years later. Scores marked est. come from reviews that publish no number. Scores marked via Wikipedia are archive ratings, mostly for older albums, taken from the “Professional ratings” box on the album’s Wikipedia page (published openly through Wikidata); each links to the original review when we can find it online, and to that Wikipedia entry when we can’t. When an outlet reviewed an album twice, years apart (often for a reissue), both scores count, each labeled with its year.
A-Side marks the critics’ top tier. An album earns it automatically, from its numbers alone: a Breakdown of 90 or higher, from at least 5 reviews, with at least 75% approval. Nobody hands it out and nobody can buy it; if new reviews pull an album below the line, it loses the badge.
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