WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM are back, and they have come back meaner. "Estuary", the Olympia band's new album, lands October 23 via Relapse Records in North America and Century Media for Europe, the UK and the rest of the world — and by their own reckoning it is the most ferocious and genre-bending thing they have made.
The record is a work of world-building, and the world is a ruin. "Our new LP 'Estuary' is set 1000 years in the future after the end of civilization," says Nathan Weaver (lead vocals, guitars). "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."
The title is not decorative. "If wilderness overcame the cities in the future, the estuaries would be realms of power and magic," Weaver explains. "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."
Musically that translates into something rawer and more volatile than the band's recent work, shot through with the storming sensuality of noisy industrial elements while still moving through the warm rain, majestic forests and diffused starlight that have always been their territory. Massive percussion and seething gothic guitars do the clearing work. The album trades on the tension between stillness and noise, animal and machine, elementals and electricity.
First single "Ghosts Among The Obelisks" is out now with a video following a warrior from the lowlands of the old world to a mountain sanctuary, through forgotten ruins haunted by ancient spirits. The earth is patiently reclaiming what was once conquered; the old world has faded into myth.
True to form, the band produced it themselves and kept it physical and analog throughout. Touring bassist Galen Baudhuin — of ARIDUS and STREET TOMBS — drops 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.
More news from the band is promised soon.
"Estuary" track listing:
- Estuary
- Knights of Tiamat
- Foretold in Reflections
- The Orca Cliffs
- Ghosts Among the Obelisks
- Wretched Spirits, Land of Light
Live: January 15–17, 2027 — Estes Park, CO — Fire In The Mountains at The Stanley Hotel
Pre-order "Estuary": orcd.co/wittr-estuary