i think these guys are the real deal inasmuch as they genuinely love the genre, have thought about where it stands philosophically, and are trying their hand at pushing it further toward the goal it implicitly sought from the start. the thrust of their outlook is that mankind has, in its quest to conquer nature, become severed from it, and is now experiencing the fear, apathy and self-loathing that comes with being an alien species only able to connect with the world through a prism of 'mediating forces' such as technology and religion. black metal is a reaction to these emotions, be it an escapist flight from modernity/civilisation or a raging war against it. this is all very clear and it's nothing new; i remember people expressing these same thoughts on internet forums ten years ago and even then they were largely recycling most of it from a mixture of band interviews and the DLA.
where WITTR become pretentious is in stating their belief that they have 'moved beyond' true black metal by trying to reestablish a spiritual connection with the natural world as opposed to wallowing in angst like the rest. sorry guys, you're late by nearly twenty years if you want to stand as trailblazers; there's been a naturalist, primitivist, heathen slant to a shit-ton of 'true black metal' forever, and the only people you're convincing otherwise are genre-dabblers who don't know any better. actually, their interviews really are off-puttingly arrogant in general; you'd think that their belief in de-emphasising the individual and transcending alienation and reactionary hatred would result in some, i don't know, humility.
one listen to this album cements the sense that they are treading rather well-worn paths; there's nothing especially distinctive about this piece's approximation of the fury, tranquillity, majesty, mystery, above all 'oceanic wholeness' (their own words) of the wilds. i don't *necessarily* doubt that this album is the authentic product of a deeply felt 'spiritual journey', but there have been many similar and more intense such journeys put on record in the past, and i'm led to suspect that the intellectual awareness these guys possess must inevitably have watered down their capacity to access the intense primal feelings they pursue, especially compared to the 'unknowing conduits for dark, mysterious energies' (again, their words) who were around at the genre's conception. there is a case to be made that a lot of great art, especially great metal, is made not by those who understand the implications of what they and others are doing, but instinctively by semi-retarded people. either way, it takes something not just primal but singularly so to take a dissociated urban douche like myself to these kinds of natural frontiers, and this ain't it.