Taking a slight detour tonight with Cult Of Luna as they appeared at the Close Up Festival in Stockholm on April 15, 2006.
Cult of Luna founded in 1998. Their style of music is similar to contemporary bands Neurosis and Isis. Cult of Luna was signed to Earache Records in the early 2000s and released five albums, including the commercially successful albums Salvation (2004) and Somewhere Along the Highway (2006). After an extended period of inactivity, Cult of Luna returned with its Indie Recordings debut Vertikal (2013) and companion EP Vertikal II (2013), both drawing inspiration from Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, Metropolis. In 2016 the band released their space-themed collaborative album, Mariner, featuring American vocalist Julie Christmas.
Cult of Luna formed from the remnants of a Umeå hardcore punk band Eclipse in 1998. They slowly garnered critical appreciation and underground popularity with early releases Cult of Luna (2001) and The Beyond (2003); however, it is 2004’s Salvation that can be considered their ‘breakthrough’ release. This was followed by Somewhere Along the Highway in 2006, another largely well-received album.
In August 2006, the band released a remake of “Marching to the Heartbeats” from Somewhere Along the Highway entitled “Heartbeats” solely on the internet community MySpace. The song was available for download for a few days and was later removed. The point was to see if the song would be kept alive by file sharing, and was also apparently a statement against the conservative music industry, said keyboardist Anders Teglund in an interview.
Cult of Luna is considered to be at the forefront of the post-metal genre, along with contemporary proponents Neurosis and Isis. The band’s songs are often long, slow, repetitive and crushing, heavy sections of distorted guitars often interspersed with orchestral interludes and extended, post-rock-esque forays. The group shuns conventional song structures, opting for a sound that evolves throughout a song, sometimes toward a climactic crescendo, instead of a verse-chorus-verse pattern. That style, incorporating sections of “light and dark” into their music, has led to comparisons with contemporaries such as Isis (with whom they have toured), Callisto and Pelican, as well as the significantly older Neurosis. Former singer Klas Rydberg, however, has stated that decidedly Radiohead are an influence.
Dive in:
(Technical note: It starts right during the intro, missing about 5-10 seconds – so prepare for a jolt)
