Swiss post-rock outfit hubris. will release their fifth studio album, White Shores, on September 10, 2026.

After four albums inspired by Greek mythology, composer and founder Jonathan Hohl turns to another lifelong source of inspiration: The Lord of the Rings and, more specifically, J.R.R. Tolkien’s meditation on mortality and immortality.

“The Hobbit was my first introduction to literature as a child,” Jonathan explains. “After The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, I became completely obsessed with Middle-earth.”

In Tolkien’s legendarium, the immortal Elves refer to death – something many humans fear – as the “Gift of Men.” The phrase presents a powerful inversion of the Western view of death as purely tragic, suggesting instead that mortality may be something meaningful, even desirable. Of the many perspectives Tolkien offers on death, the one that resonated most deeply with Jonathan comes from the closing moments of The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo Baggins departs into the West:

“The grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

Following the death of his grandfather, this passage became the emotional and conceptual foundation for White Shores.

The album unfolds across five movements, each representing a single word in the sentence: Death. Is. Just. Another. Path.

Drawn from Gandalf’s words to Pippin Took in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the phrase is spoken in the face of what appears to be their final moments. It serves both as a source of comfort and as the album’s central theme.

The five-part structure also reflects Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s theory of the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

“Originally, I thought naming a track ‘Death’ might feel too bleak,” Jonathan says. “But that is exactly what this album is about—offering a different perspective.”

“The idea for the song began while I was experimenting with a reverse delay pedal,” Jonathan explains. “The pad-like sound it produced felt incredibly soothing, and I hadn’t heard that texture used as the main focus of a song before. What started as a possible interlude quickly evolved into a full composition: a long, ambient and calming introduction that builds to a heavy climax. Everything we love in a post-rock song.

The most difficult part was learning to perform with a reverse delay while staying locked to the tempo during recording. You have to anticipate every note and maintain complete concentration throughout. Extremely disorienting—0/10, would not recommend.”