Wolves in The Throne Room from Olympia, Washington, are the flag-bearers of the so-called post-black metal scene. They personally describe their music as ‘purifying black metal’ or also even as ‘transformative black metal’. Their unique form of black metal is formed by a hypnotic mix of, say, the manic aggression of early Mayhem, the doom metal of Neurosis and the ethereal mysticism of Dead Can Dance. Since ‘07, the band has been housed on the Southern Lord label led by Greg Anderson from Sunn O))). They also released their latest masterpiece on it in ‘11: ‘Celestial Lineage’. Ideologically, Wolves In The Throne Room keep themselves far removed from the usual satanic metal-clichés and are followers of what they themselves describe as an eco-spiritual or eco-anarchistic philosophy.

A Wolves In The Throne Room show is an almost shamanistic ritual in which the musicians carry you away to a dark, Dantesque underworld. To say it with the words of drummer Aaron Weaver: “It is a kind of existential horror, because we all feel there is something lurking beneath the surface, there is something primal underneath, something hidden. We try, much like Shamans do, to delve in those places, those Lovecraftian, dark places, and come back changed and transformed and perhaps with a certain new knowledge.”