Kings of USBM Wolves in the Throne Room has returned with sharpened teeth. Its new album Estuary (Relapse Records) carries the hallmark of their unyielding dedication to the physical craft and analog production techniques. The record is set to be released on October 23, 2026 [pre-order], Estuary is Wolves in the Throne Room’s most ferocious and genre-bending record to date.

Nathan Weaver (lead vocals, guitars) remarks: “Our new LP ‘Estuary’ is set 1000 years in the future after the end of civilization. Survivors of a cataclysm wander the haunted ruins. It is a world of mutant creatures and open portals. Post-apocalyptic religion takes form in a wild landscape.”

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.”

First single “Ghosts Among the Obelisks” arrives today alongside a music video in which 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.