Watain to Break Up After the Release of Their Eighth Record
I feel like this was bound to happen at some point. Earlier today (Saturday, September 20), Swedish black metal band Watain released a statement that might bring a tear to their fans’ eyes. Basically, they’ll be giving one big sayonara salute to the music industry some time after their next album releases, not too far away from their 30th anniversary as a band.
Watain’s remarks, which were written on what looked to be official Watain letterhead stationary read:
“Ladies and gentlemen, followers, allies and supporters, this is a solemn transmission from the Temple of Watain.
“We hereby announce that in III years’ time — upon our 30th anniversary — Watain’s eighth and final full-length album will be released. The album will mark the closure of a thirty-year-long magical Work, the last crossroad of Watain, after which the band will cease to exist. The ending of a triad of decades during which we have shared our sacred path through this strange world with you, our loyal audience, on a steady course towards the beckoning darkness of The End.
“Over the course of the next three years, the reasons for this will be spoken of and accounted for. But for now we just want to say this: Have our songs and our art not always dealt with finitude and mortality, with DEATH and the beyond? Now it is time to claim our own conclusion, and shape it as we have shaped our stage and our songs, in the fires of will. Instead of being consumed by the jaws of time, or broken upon the wheel of circumstance, we choose to let Watain return, unbowed and undefeated, back into the primordial chaos that once gave it life.
“And so we stand on the threshold to our final chapter, and III years of Work remain. III liminal years in the borderlands between the living and the dead, during which new music will be written and shared, concerts will take place, and other things, that will be revealed in due time, will emanate, with the certainty of DEATH, from the Temple of Watain.
“Take this message not as a farewell, but as the first note of a sacrificial requiem, as well as your invitation to partake in shaping these last years into something beyond compare.
“Praise be to the Devilgod by whom our path is blessed, and upon whose altar we now place this our humble offering.
“To the DEATH and far beyond!”`
Well, that’s all folks. May their next journey be just as brutal as their live performances.
