[Cover photo credit to Henk van Rijssen]

Netherlands-based Dark Folk band Sowulo have announced their fifth album, NIHT, coming out on August 29, 2025 on Season of Mist. For the past 15 years, Nordic Folk artist Faber Horbach has “celebrated the genre’s pagan legacy by tracing our connection with the sun” through the music of Sowulo. But for NIHT, the band “journeys into darkness.”

Written by Horbach while grieving the loss of both his father and stepfather, lead single “Āsteorfan” (“To Die”) is “a meditation that, while filled with sorrow, finds that death is not a final resting place, but a portal into spiritual awakening.”

Weaving together the sounds of instruments like the carnyx, nyckelharpa, celtic harp, shaman drums, blow horns, Irish bouzouki, taglharpa, lyre, viola and various traditional vocal techniques, Sowulo shapes its distinctive sound.

The name “Sowulo,” meaning “Sun” in Proto-Germanic, reflects the essence of the music.

They say:

As we circle the sun, we feel the cyclical nature of life: day and night, the four seasons, birth and death, and the eternal dance between decay and renewal.

Through the use of a wide array of historical instruments, melodies, and “philosophical lyrics in Anglo-Saxon,” Sowulo crafts “an immersive sonic landscape that invites listeners to embark on an inner journey.”