American atmospheric black metal band Wolves In The Throne Room is known as one of the most progressive and open-minded groups in their genre. Inspired by the ferocious energy of the Pacific Northwest, their music is an ode to rainstorms, log fires and the nature of their home region, which they build with ritual precision and devotion to the true spirit of black metal from crushing blastbeats, wide ambient landscapes and fanning guitar parts.

Although WITTR clearly positions itself as a black metal band, the group stays away from the genre's clichés and is loved by a wider audience of fans of intense and adventurous guitar music. Thus, post-rock adventurers Godspeed You! Black Emperor WITTR at their curated All Tommorow's Parties festival in 2010, and in 2009 Phil Elverum asked them to remix two tracks from the Mount Eerie album 'Wind's Poem'. With their trilogy of 'Two Hunters' (2007), 'Black Cascade' (2009) and 'Celestial Lineage' (2011) for Southern Lord, Wolves In The Throne Room positioned themselves in a unique place in the US black metal scene: "somewhere between the crossovers and the kvlt."

In October 2023, WITTR re-emerged from the woods of Washington state with their 'Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge' EP, which once again pushes the band's sound in new directions: symphonic black metal, atmospheric industrial, ritual dark ambient and folk, with the band taking apart and redefining the theme of Celtic mythology. Their live shows, for this tour again with founding member and drummer Aaron Weaver (a.k.a. Cedar Serpent) in the ranks, are a unique, intense and purifying experience.

Portugal's Gaerea adorn themselves in black veils of darkness and desolation, building concrete guitar walls that they use to transform their experiences of isolation and dark thoughts into stunning cathartic metal tracks. "Cascading maelstroms of agression and beauty," as they describe it themselves, tipped as a great promise of the new generation of extreme metal.

Hailing from Olympia, Washington, Mortiferum worked their way into the attention of leading media outlets like Cvlt Nation and Decibel Magazine with their 2017 'Altar of Decay' demo. Their atmospheric version of death metal stems from a shared love of Finnish and American veterans and is indebted to classics such as Bolt Thrower and Evoken.