There’s no limit to Cult of Luna’s creative vision. Inspired by hardcore, sludge metal, folk, art-rock and beyond, the Swedish luminaries are revered as one of the heaviest and most restless bands in alternative music. Their new–and tenth–studio album, In the Shadow of Your Shadow, is another bold leap into the black: possibly the darkest release to bear their name, and full of ideas that show they remain peerless 25 years into their career.
Hailing from Umeå, Sweden–home to fellow legendary innovators Meshuggah and Refused–Cult of Luna built an ardent fanbase with their albums Cult Of Luna (2001) and The Beyond (2003), before Salvation (2004) catapulted them to global acclaim. The raw and vast Somewhere Along the Highway (2006) won Sweden’s prestigious P3 Gold Award for Best Rock/Metal Album of the Year, and inspired the band to fully embrace their metal side for 2008’s crushing Eternal Kingdom. Each subsequent release added new shades to their sound: Vertikal (2013) took influence from industrial cityscapes; the Julie Christmas team-up Mariner (2016) was a space-metal rocket ride that got nominated for a Swedish Grammis Award; A Dawn to Fear (2019) was their longest standalone album to date; and The Long Road North (2022) featured contributions from musician/actor Mariam Wallentin as well as the critically acclaimed musician/composer Colin Stetson (Hereditary OST). Cult of Luna have also collaborated with such beloved musicians as Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick (who remixed “Vicarious Redemption” for 2013’s Vertikal II EP) and Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan (guest vocalist on “Inside of a Dream” from 2021’s The Raging River EP), as well as curating their own genre-busting festival, Beyond the Redshift.
“Stagnation is the only thing that scares me,” states singer/guitarist/co-founder Johannes Persson. “I’ve said this in every interview I’ve done for the past 25 years: I don’t care whether or not people think we’re repeating ourselves. As long as we feel like we aren’t, we will continue to do this.”
A more-than-worthy addition to their dynamic canon, In the Shadow of Your Shadow–co-produced by Daniel Berglund and mixed by Magnus Lindberg–is a 71-minute monolith: a stark rejection of trends, convention, and pandering to one’s audience. Lyrically, it channels recent experiences of loss into a bleak set of songs. The title track and lead single are about feelings thought to be long buried that return after something painful occurs. It takes the perspective of this anguish and characterizes it as a parasite: “His body is weak, the cracks will fit me. A disfigured form, I will complete it.”
“We all have our history, we all have our baggage,” Persson explains. “Everything that you’ve gone through leads you to where you are right now. It’s a boring cliche, but it’s true. There were certain things that I thought I’d left behind, and certain events during the last couple of years have brought them back.When you put the lid on things for decades, it’s interesting to see how they come back. This parasite is back again.”
“Sadness Will Reign” is a blunt, misanthropic statement, with guest vocalist Joe Duplantier–frontman of Grammy-winning extreme metal titans Gojira–declaring “All of you are born from filth!” to hammer home the track’s fury.
“What I like about Joe is that he has a very particular voice,” says Persson. “I think it’s one of the reasons why Gojira stands out as the metal giants that they are. It has its own unique character and would stand out even if you put him next to a hundred or a thousand other vocalists.” But for all the signature ferocity on display across In the Shadow of Your Shadow, the album also finds Cult of Luna broadening their own horizons. “Landby” is a hauntingly mellow instrumental, built on a gradual guitar melody and ominous whistling. “The Rift” pushes the band to both softer and faster places: passages of loose strums and subtle keyboards are interrupted by shockingly quick metal, calling back to their hardcore roots. “One More Day”–a song about the emotional struggle of depression, getting through life one day at a time–drops to a Fields of the Nephilim-like crawl, emphasizing the baritone of guest David Eugene Edwards, 16 Horsepower leader and American folk icon. “David has been a huge influence for years,” says Persson. “I’ve been a huge fan of 16 Horsepower, his solo projects and Wovenhand for decades. ‘One More Day’ is one of my favorite tracks on the album. His voice fits perfectly on the song and it carries the subject matter with conviction.”
The album concludes with the cataclysmic “Burial,” which stacks some of Cult of Luna’s finest, hardest riffs into a truly towering achievement. A near-12-minute contemplation on mortality, it was inspired by the arc of life and death and how it’s perceived differently by people from different walks of life. “I’ve always had a non-dramatic relationship with death,” explains Persson. “I think it’s because I grew up in a religious environment where death was not considered the end. Even though I’m an atheist now and believe that what happens after you die is the same as what happened before you were born, the subject of the end, and how it makes people want to throw themselves into the vast nothingness, has always fascinated me.”
In the Shadow of Your Shadow is another evolutionary effort from a band who refuse to stand still. It’s devastating and diverse, and it cements their place as trailblazers
