  We use the long-wavelength effective theory of black branes (blackfold
approach) to perturbatively construct holographic duals of the vacua of the
$\mathcal{N}=1$* supersymmetric gauge theory. Employing the mechanism of
Polchinski and Strassler, we consider wrapped black five-brane probes with
D3-brane charge moving in the perturbative supergravity backgrounds
corresponding to the high and low temperature phases of the gauge theory. Our
approach recovers the results for the brane potentials and equilibrium
configurations known in the literature in the extremal limit, while away from
extremality we find metastable black D3-NS5 configurations with horizon
topology $\mathbb{R}^3\times \mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{S}^3$ in certain regimes
of parameter space, which cloak potential brane singularities. We uncover novel
features of the phase diagram of the $\mathcal{N}=1$* gauge theory in different
ensembles and provide further evidence for the appearance of metastable states
in holographic backgrounds dual to confining gauge theories.
