The Swedish black metal band Watain has announced the end of their career. With a special video message on social media on September 20th they told the fans that they are planning the recording of a new album to be their last album ever. They will celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2028 with the recording of the new eighth album and concerts, and will finish their career. The band invites all the fans to be a part of this three-year-long magical journey, which will lead Watain to the primordial chaos. The reasons for this conclusion will be revealed in the next three years. Watain are famous for their scandalous live performances with fire, a lot of pyrotechnics, and animal blood on the stage.

Here is the full text of Watain’s statement:

“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!”