Swedish black metal giants Watain have issued a three-year notice, confirming that 2028 will mark their final year. The milestone coincides with the band’s 30th anniversary, which they have declared will also serve as the end of Watain. Their eighth and final full-length record is expected to arrive that year, closing three decades of work.
Formed in 1998, Watain have become a defining force within black metal, known not only for their music on record, but also for their intense, ceremonious live rituals. Watain’s latest album was 2022’s The Agony & Ecstasy of Watain via Nuclear Blast Records.
The group issued the following statement:
“This is a transmission from the Temple of Watain, announcing the bands’ ending on the 20th of September 2028.For more news about the final chapter of Watain, sign up to receive our free monthly newsletter The Howling at www.templeofwatain.com.”
Alongside the announcement, a video clip was shared featuring a scrolling message, reading:
“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. Ill 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!
Watain
Uppsala, September 20th 2025″
