Wolves in the Throne Room have released Estuary through Century Media Records.
The album has been trailed since September. The title track came with a video the band made themselves, following mythical figures through collapsed railway track and industrial ruin gone back to brambles, and Nathan Weaver described a world where the wilderness has overwhelmed the cities and estuaries have become places of power.
That premise is the opposite of the one American black metal usually works from. Most of the genre writes about what is being lost. This record writes about what comes after the loss, which is a stranger and more useful place to put a concept album.
Two editions exist alongside the standard one, an international version and a separate North American pressing, which for a band whose audience is split between the two continents is less of a collector exercise than it looks.
They have been working from Washington state since 2003, and this is the record where the idea finally has a map.