WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

Wolves in the Throne Room formed in 2002 when brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver started writing songs in a collapsing cabin on an overgrown farm outside Olympia, Washington. What began as raw black metal grew into something more ritualistic: side-long tracks built from droning analog synthesizers, field-recorded wind and rain, and an abiding devotion to the forests of the Pacific Northwest that shapes their production as much as their lyrics. The band records almost entirely at Owl Lodge, the studio they built themselves in the Washington woods, and that self-sufficiency has become central to their reputation as one of American black metal's most influential acts. Their tenth album imagines the planet a thousand years after civilization's collapse, with nature reclaiming the cities and new religions forming around the wreckage of the old world. Two decades in, they remain uninterested in speed or spectacle, favoring the slow accumulation of atmosphere over anything resembling a hook.