Today, Purity Through Fire announces Augst 25th as the international release date for Wooden Throne‘s highly anticipated second album, Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky, on deluxe digipack CD format, featuring massive embossed gold-printing.
In 2021, at the dawn of autumn’s oncoming frost, a new name in mystical splendor emerged: Wooden Throne. Although brand-new at the time, the creator behind Wooden Throne was none other than October Falls mainman Mikko Lehto. While that band has prolifically spanned a wealth of no-less-thrilling styles during the past 20-plus years, with Wooden Throne‘s Under the Moon They Wander Until Fading Away debut did Lehto get to focus on the spectral mysteries of the night and suitably create epic black metal of a most stargazing stripe. Granted, October Falls have spanned the more epic ends of black metal themselves, but where the forest is the spiritual/psychic plane for their creations, Wooden Throne‘s realm is more so the moon and cosmos. The cover art gave visual cues, and the message was well received across the international underground.
Now, as summer’s heat inevitably fades away amid soon-to-be-falling leaves, Wooden Throne returns with an equally mighty successor: Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky. Almost too perfectly titled, Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky highlights the nostalgia hinted at by its full-length predecessor while also expanding Lehto’s gaze as high as that night sky AND down to the mossy depths of the forest floor. Much of what made Wooden Throne‘s first album such a classic is still intact – acute sense of space (often literally), impassioned performance, kaleidoscopic production – but Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky is every inch a counterpart / counterpoint. The real development is the prominent usage of piano: never busy but always front and center, sublimely bittersweet notes lead the onward-and-skyward charge, pulling heartstrings as handily as they send chills down the spine. In this sense, and when coupled with Lehto’s more overtly lead-oriented guitar work here, Wooden Throne‘s second album is not so much a strictly “black metal” record as it is an atmospheric metal one – and, once again, paradoxically uplifting no matter what appellation you apply to it.
A superlative guide under any moniker, with Wooden Throne‘s Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky does Lehto provides a poignant soundtrack for wandering within the forest, exploring dream states, or simply pondering life’s impossible mysteries. Maximum immersion awaits the homesick explorer!
Begin that immersion with the brand-new title track “Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky” here:
Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Wooden Throne’s Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky
1. Eternal Wanderer of the Night Sky [5:44]
2. Forward into Starless Abyss [5:57]
3. The Autumnal Frost [5:50]
4. The Earthly Womb [5:37]
5. Firm Roots of the Scarred North [4:36]
6. Talvikki [6:52]