Pacific Northwest black metal veterans Wolves In The Throne Room are established masters of heavy, mystical evil shit, and they've just announced plans for an ambitious new concept album. Estuary, their 10th LP, follows the 2023 EP Crypt Of Ancestral Knowledge and takes place in an apocalyptic future. Here's how frontman Nathan Weaver describes it:
Our new LP Estuary is set 1000 years in the future, after the end of civilization. Survivors of a cataclysm wander the haunted ruins. It is a world of mutant creatures and open portals. Post-apocalyptic religion takes form in a wild landscape...
If wilderness overcame the cities in the future, the estuaries would be realms of power and magic. Within the album's world-building, the estuaries are key nexus points where magic has taken on physical form. Spirits good and evil walk the earth.
Wolves In The Throne Room produced Estuary themselves, mostly at their own Owl Lodge studio in Olympia, Washington. Touring bassist Galen Baudhuin plays on the LP. Nathan Weaver directed his own video for the eight-minute lead single "Ghosts In The Obelisks." It's full of imagery that I would've thought was medieval, but I guess the society of the distant future just looks medieval. Check it out below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Estuary"
02 "Knights Of Tiamat"
03 "Foretold In Reflections"
04 "The Orca Cliffs"
05 "Ghosts Among The Obelisks"
06 "Wretched Spirits, Land Of Light"
Estuary is out 10/23, a very Wolves In The Throne Room time of year, on Relapse. Pre-order it here.
