Cult of Luna
- Story by Steve Smith
Swedish septet Cult of Luna moves beyond Neurosis comparisons with Salvation
The sound of eyes rolling skyward can just about be made out through a trans-Atlantic phone connection. Eager to talk up Cult of Luna’s groundbreaking new release, Salvation, guitarist Johannes Persson dispenses with one common assumption that has clung to the band like an obstinate barnacle.
“We got used to the Neurosis comparison with the first album,” Persson says. “It’s funny, because we started Cult of Luna without knowing who Neurosis were. It was kind of comical, but it got annoying.”
Even so, the connection remains understandable: emerging from the ashes of Swedish hardcore band Eclipse in the late ‘90s, Cult of Luna pursued a similar path of slow, unremittingly dense sheets of distorted guitar and hoarsely howled vocals on its self-titled 1999 debut and 2002 follow up, The Beyond. On Salvation, the band opted for a different approach.
“For the first time, I dared to be influenced by bands I was listening to, like Sigur Rós, Radiohead, Mono and Mogwai,” Persson says. “We wanted to work out of the concept that less is more: The only thing you’ll hear on this album is two guitars, where on The Beyond you might have heard six. And with Anders [Teglund], the new keyboard player, in the band, we have more alternatives to work with atmospherics and melodies.”
That’s not to suggest that Cult of Luna has gone soft. “Vague Illusions,” for example, still serves up a hefty dose of pummel, topped by Klas Rydberg’s agonized groan. Midway through, however, the song settles into gentle repose—which just makes the inevitable return to bludgeon more overwhelming. Subtle touches like the wire-brush drumming and finger cymbals on “Waiting for You” or the distant, lazy slide guitar of “Crossing Over” stand in bold relief to Cult of Luna’s prior onslaught.
While Salvation is as lyrically opaque as its predecessors, Persson notes that the relevance of the title is hinted at in the spoken interludes between songs. “It’s about a man who starts seeing things that he’s seen all his life from a different perspective, and seeing that his actions have consequences,” he explains. “He doesn’t know if he’s on the right side of the ‘red line’ between madness and sanity.”
A politically astute thinker who promotes books by Jared Diamond and Noam Chomsky on the band’s message board, Persson prefers to allow listeners to reach their own conclusions regarding Cult of Luna’s message. “We’re just trying to create art that inspires people to think for a few seconds,” he says. “I don’t want to exaggerate what we can achieve, but we’ve met people at shows and gotten e-mails from people who have their own interpretation. And that is the biggest honor: that people actually think, and try to understand something of your work.”
