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. Estuary is their most ferocious and genre-bending record to date.
Nathan Weaver (lead vocals, guitars) 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.”
Resonant with that hardwiring; Estuary is 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.
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. Weaver says: “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.”
Take the track “Ghosts Among the Obelisks" - a warrior journeys from the lowlands of the old world to a mountain sanctuary, passing through forgotten ruins haunted by ancient spirits. The earth patiently reclaims what was once conquered, while the distant memory of the old world has faded into myth. Elsewhere, "Knights of Tiamat" explores temples of the ancient future that feed on repurposed electrical grids pulsing with new magic. The spirit of place takes new forms. Kody Keyworth (guitars) says: “I had a dream two years ago while we were on tour in Germany. In the distant future, the small number of humans who remained were in small tribes that deeply revered and worshiped gigantic, decrepit wind turbine towers. Without knowing what these structures were or their purpose, these people placed immense importance on one of the last remaining structures of industrialized society. The new religions and mythology that would be created from this fascinated me, I found it deeply moving and it helped inspire an imagining of what that world would entail for mankind after the fall.”
