(click to download high res copy)

(photo by:Alison Scarpulla
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(photo by: Chris Beug
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During the Summer of 2002 at an Earth First rendezvous in the Cascade mountains of Washington State, guitarist Nathan Weaver was inspired to create a band that merged a Cascadian eco-spiritual awareness with the misanthropic Norwegian eruptions of the 90's. Themes of ancientness, apocalypse, connection to place and the struggle to find meaning and spirituality in a mechanical and materialistic world would be woven together in a singular alchemy.

In the spring of 2004, Nathan and his brother, drummer Aaron Weaver, moved to a dilapidated farmstead on the outskirts of Olympia, WA. The creation of their farm-stronghold, called Calliope, would be intrinsically linked to the development of Wolves in the Throne Room. It was during the first long, dark winter living in the collapsed farmhouse at Calliope that the band developed their trance-inducing sound and solidified the burning intent that would animate the band's music.

Since that time Wolves in the Throne Room have become one of the most important and highly regarded bands in extreme music. Over the course of 3 studio albums and hundreds of live performances the band has slowly boiled away the prima materia of Black Metal to distill a unique essence.

The transmutation reaches a new level with the completion of Celestial Lineage the clans’ new Astral Black Metal document. In contrast to the bleakly hypnotic architecture of 2008’s Black Cascade, Celestial Lineage expands into a more expansive and visionary territory. The band’s trademark long-form approach to arrangement remains intact, but there is a stronger thread of Popul Vuh-inspired underworld synthscapes and star-lit pulse woven with the intertwining guitar figures.

Although it is obviously inspired by European Black Metal, Wolves in the Throne Room create music that is intensely local in its orientation. Certainly, Celestial Lineage is a manifestation of the northwestern landscape, but it also arises out of an underground West Coast tradition formed by successive generations of psychic crusaders: Theosophists, beatniks, the Grateful Dead, Neurosis, the back-to-the-land movement, satanic hippies, tree-spiking anarchist punks. Aaron and Nathan Weaver, the duo behind Wolves in the Throne Room, refract the transcendent and mythic aspects of Emperor and Burzum through this idiosyncratic Cascadian prism. The resulting music invokes a misty dream world. Rain drenched specters looming at the edge of the wood. Echoes from the Astral Plane. Ancient cedar deities robed in moss. A glimpse of a bronze-domed temple among the firs.

Celestial Lineage was written and recorded over the course of the first six months of 2011. The Weaver brothers worked with Producer/mystic Randall Dunn (Earth, Boris, SUNN 0))), Cave Singers, Bjork/Omar Souleyman), with whom the band has developed a close relationship since their first collaboration on 2007’s Two Hunters. 3 songs are bejeweled by Jessika Kenney’s liturgical choir and solo voice. Aaron Turner (ISIS) also contributes orations to the maelstrom.

The band has said that It is the final record in a trilogy that began with Two Hunters. Syncronistically, It is also the last record that will be recorded at Randall Dunn’s storied Aleph studio, which has been the birthplace of scores of groundbreaking records over the past 10 years.

For this release, the band enlisted photo_grapher Ali Scarpulla to create dimension-bending images in the Olympic mountains and around band’s Olympia stronghold. In keeping with the band’s aesthetic, Scarpulla relies on unorthodox analog techniques.

The band will begin a series of tours on September 1st. In the US, they will travel with their own PA system thus enabling them to perform in warehouses, groves and collapsed barns rather than the well-worn circuit of clubs and bars. Tours of other continents will follow

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Or Contact:
SOUTHERNLORD • 323-467-6076
info@southernlord.com www.southernlord.com