Wolves in the Throne Room

Heretics of the Black Metal genre and the Kings of USBM, WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM have returned with sharpened teeth. Their new album Estuary carries the hallmark of their unyielding dedication to the physical craft and analog production techniques, executed with zero cut corners. After more than twenty years, the pioneers of Cascadian Black Metal have neither withered, rested, nor recycled past glories. They continue to rise with unparalleled strength, and Estuary is their most ferocious and genre-bending record to date. WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM express nature’s current, bypassing the confines of a musical landscape that trended toward homogenization. In their music, nature is not an object nor a passive backdrop. It is the evolutionary spirit which breaks into new territory. Estuary is resonant with that hardwiring; rawer, more volatile with the storming sensuality of noisy industrial elements, evolving through the domain of warm rain, majestic forests and diffused starlight. Massive percussion and seething gothic guitars wipe the listener’s psyche clear of all stagnation, transforming them into active, evolutionary conduits. Nathan Weaver (lead vocals, guitar) comments: “Our new album Estuary takes place 1,000 years in the future, after the death of civilization. I've always felt such calm at the idea of humanity vanishing from the world, and nature reclaiming everything. I dream of being alone in this setting and experiencing total calm and peace. This has been a recurring theme in all of Wolves’ music but for Estuary, it is at the forefront.” In the world of Estuary, clans surround structures of a bygone industrial Aeon without knowing their original purpose. By assigning them a new meaning, new societies aggregate. Estuary explores the tension and networking between stillness and noise, animal and machine, elementals and electricity, and the awakening sophistication implicit in our mysterious origin. Estuary was produced by WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, with touring bassist Galen Baudhuin (Aridus, Street Tombs) dropping the low-end into a devastating sub-terrain. The bulk of the album was recorded at the band’s own Owl Lodge studio in Olympia, Washington, with drums tracked by Nicholas Wilbur at The Unknown (a converted former church in Anacortes, Washington). The band continues their tradition of producing the album’s music videos. Nathan says: “We filmed all the music videos in the form of short films while we were writing and recording the music. So they are intrinsically linked and tell the story of the album and create a more vivid and tangible world. In the video for the lead single “Ghosts Among the Obelisks,” a warrior makes the choice to leave the lowlands and the ruins of the old world, and travel to a fabled forest sanctuary deep in the mountains. Within the concrete ruins he encounters spirits both good and evil.” WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM will be opening portals performing songs from Estuary on the "Knights of Tiamat Tour" across the UK and Europe this winter, followed by the USA and internationally in 2027.