Atmospheric black metal really is my go-to happy place music: a paradox, I know, but it is what it is. Sprawling monuments of ruin and despair, populated by bleak misgivings and haunted by Jungian genetic memory archetypes – these are the themes and sounds that get my blood racing. Wolvencrown’s latest EP, A Shadow of What Once Was, is consequently exactly what I am looking for in my daily playlists, building perfectly on the strong foundation laid by the likes of Drudkh, Imperium Dekadenz or Winterfylleth. The latter is a particularly apt name to bring up, as Wolvencrown shares several characteristics with Manchester’s greatest gift to contemporary black metal: not only do both acts hail from the island nation of Great Britain, but they also both place heritage front and center when...
