Pt. 1 Blackmetal: Wolves in the Throne Room | Blut Aus Nord

Pt. 1 Blackmetal: Wolves in the Throne Room | Blut Aus Nord | Alcest

October 01, 2026

This week’s post is on Wolves in the Throne Room—a Blackmetal band from Washington—Alcest and Blut Aus Nord. Since blackmetal accounts for a good percentage of my favorite bands, I'll have to break it down over a few posts and just cover the main ones.

WITTR is a very special band to me because the pivotal point in my relationship with John was due to them. In 2014, I asked John if he wanted to listen to their new release “Celestite” with me—this was was really when things took off. Actually, I screenshotted the exact moment when this happened at Nan's and just kept the picture through the years (11/19/2014 a 5:34pm).

What I appreciate about them is that don't have to burn down churches and be extreme to fall into the blackmetal genre. Their music is melancholy yet peaceful -- emotionally dark but beautiful. And, they have a new album coming out this year!!

https://wolvesinthethroneroom.bandcamp.com/music

My top 3 albums of theirs are Celestial Lineage (2011), Diadem of 12 Stars (favorites: tracks 1&6), and Celestite

I'm not usually crazy about chanting or opera-like singing. However, tracks 1 & 5 off Celestial Lineage are simply amazing and I find myself humming them quite often. Very memorable. My favorite tracks off this album are 1, 3,5 in that order.

https://wolvesinthethroneroom.bandcamp.com/album/celestial-lineage

When I visited Lurray Caverns as a teenager, they had an organ made of stalactites. I always thought their album art looked similar. I could see them hypothetically playing a concert there....other than the probability of sound waves shattering the stalactites/ mites, what a cool venue it would be to see them play.

Backtracking, I initially got into black metal through postmetal when I was 14/15 years old—French, blackmetal band Alcest was the specific link.

I’m not going to get into the logistics of very specific, different aspects of this genre because there’s probably a middle-aged, bald, white dude with sleeve tats, who can explain it far better than myself. He’ll probably be on Reddit.

Onto Alcest briefly…

Initial albums I listened to the most were “Ecailles de lune” (2010) “Les Voyages de lame” (2012), Kodama (2016), then “Spiritual Instinct” (2019).

https://alcest.bandcamp.com/

They have a new release of Kodama coming out soon and it looks awesome!

Blut Aus Nord was next on this journey (also French “hallucinogenic” blackmetal). I did make John listen to them and while there was alcohol involved, I remember him liking them. From there, I recommended Violet Cold and Darkspace— he seemed to prefer the atmospheric Blackmetal moreso (which I anticipated).

https://blutausnord.bandcamp.com/album/777-sect-s-2

My favorite albums of theirs: 777 Sect(s) (2011), 777 The Desanctification (2011), 777 Cosmosophy (2012), and Codex Obscura Nomina (2016).

Their Sect(s) album’s artwork was my laptop screensaver for many years.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years this month since David, John, and I went to see WITTR with Cloudrat. It was the first concert I attended not as a minor, so it was a pretty special show. Initially, John only came with us because he wanted to see cloudrat, but after hearing Queen of the Borrowed Light, we was up front with his left ear almost smashed against their amps.

Ticket stub

Setlist (of course we missed Thou playing with them booooo)

Pictures from the concert in RVA 2016

I recorded it live so will add this to the list of things to upload to YouTube. It’s just sitting in my google drive right now.

You will notice the classic Strangematter setting, but with a different haze than the usual devil’s lettuce- WITTR added incense burning to their set. Great show, but when they closed the doors, I got a major migraine from all the smoke. John let me sleep in his backseat on the drive home.

“Celestial lineage” CD John got me in 2016. It’s been heavily played, so much we tried the banana trick on it and it’s still going strong.

Favorite tracks# 1, 3,5

I have a couple of black (2016) WITTR stickers but 1) you can’t read them 2) I lost them in an envelope with the Blut Aus nord stickers. Once I find them, I’ll add here.

WITTR 2016 navy tour tees (David and I each have one). It’s one of my favorite band tee shirt designs.