Cult of Luna Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

CULT OF LUNA – THE LONG ROAD NORTH

Feb 092022

(Andy Synn takes a journey with Cult of Luna on The Long Road North, out Friday on Metal Blade)

Like I said in my review of the new Immolation album yesterday, writing about a band with a long and much-loved career comes with several inherent complications.

In the case of Cult of Luna, the band are so beloved by their fanbase that it’s hard to get people to admit that they’re not infallible, as I found out when I suggested that both their last two releases, 2019’s A Dawn to Fear and last year’s The Raging River EP, had some significant (although not insurmountable) flaws.

The thing is, I’ve always tried to be as honest and objective as I can be with all my reviews – while acknowledging, of course, that true objectivity is an impossible goal – which means providing as clear and as complete an impression of the music, its highs and its lows, its good points and its bad points, and it seems to me like it would be doing the band a disservice to treat them any differently than anyone else.

So let me state this clearly – The Long Road North is not a perfect album. Nor is is “the best album of the band’s career”, as I’ve seen it described elsewhere (in some cases seemingly before they’d even heard it). But it is still, for all that it occasionally loses its way, a road well worth taking.

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 25): ATRA HAERESIS, BEYOND GRACE, CALLUS, CRYSTAL COFFIN, CULT OF LUNA, FUNERAL CHANT, MAN MUST DIE, MARIANAS REST, NORNA, STORMKEEP, THE LION’S DAUGHTER, WITCHDEN

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021 4 Responses »

Feb 042022

Today I must bring this list to an end. It’s not because I’m really finished — I have dozens more songs I’d like to add and write about. It’s because we’re now a week into February and I really ought to spend more time focusing on the songs of this year instead of yesteryear.

So, please do me a favor and hold your fire. I know I didn’t include some of the songs you’ve been waiting to see, and please don’t question how the hell I chose the ones I did include, at the cost of your own favorites, because it was anything but an organized, scientific, and well-thought-out process. I’m happy with what I chose, but easily could have chosen others.

That statement is as true of today’s final songs as all the ones that came before. I picked a few — okay, more than a few (though accompanied by fewer words and no artwork) — but in coming down to the wire I yielded even more to random impulse than probably ever before.

On Monday I’ll add a “wrap up” post that compiles everything on the list from eager beginning to anguished end, all in one place. And with that, here are the final choices, this time arranged alphabetically. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1)

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Jan 162022

This weekend hasn’t been conducive to my NCS plans. I didn’t have time yesterday morning to post a round-up of new songs and videos, only time enough to share some artwork and news. During Saturday afternoon I plowed through a lot of new tracks and videos that mostly surfaced over the last week, and found a whopping 23 of them that I enjoyed to varying degrees.

Obviously, that’s way too many to post about, even for an OVERFLOWING STREAMS type of round-up. Some sifting was required. But sifting takes time, and for reasons I won’t bore you with it turns out that free time has been in very short supply this weekend. What to do?

Well, what I decided to do was just to say Fuck It and foist all 23 of those songs and videos upon you, with almost no commentary about the music and not even the usual links and artwork, just a small amount of info about the releases that include them. Even with that approach I’m dubious that I’ll get everything ready to go before I have to depart my computer for the rest of the day. So I alphabetized everything by band name and cut the group into two parts.

Part 2 might come tomorrow instead of later today. Sadly, I won’t have time for a SHADES OF BLACK column, though there is some black metal sprinkled through this giant collection, along with music across a big range of other sub-genres. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CULT OF LUNA / ECLIPTIC / ZEBADIAH CROWE

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Feb 042021

Cult of Luna

(Andy Synn wrote these three reviews of recent and forthcoming EPs.)

It’s been a busy, busy week for me this week… but, then, when isn’t it?

It’s times like these, though, that I really appreciate the short-form, straight-to-the-point, structure provided by a good EP.

It’s a place for bands to experiment, to explore new ideas, and to formulate these little (or not always so little) slabs of perfectly proportioned form and function without having to worry about living up to the demands or expectations surrounding a “full-length” release.

Of course, one of the EPs featured here today is basically long enough to be considered an album – although I can see why, after listening to it, the band themselves declared it an EP – but all three of them manage to give a more focussed impression of each of the bands in question, while also providing an attention-grabbing primer for whatever they’re going to do next.

And so, without further ado… Continue reading »

CULT OF LUNA: “A DAWN TO FEAR”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Sep 182019

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Sweden’s Cult of Luna, which will be released by Metal Blade Records on September 20th.)

It’s only natural for any fan to want a band’s new album to be the best thing they’ve ever done.

Partially it’s because we’ve all been conditioned to believe that if an artist’s newest release doesn’t sell more, get a higher score, increase their exposure, etc, that it’s somehow a failure, but there’s also the simple fact that, as fans, we want the bands we love to keep getting better, to keep impressing and surprising us and making us feel that electric frisson of excitement every time.

As a writer/reviewer you’ve got to be doubly careful about this. After all, if you start throwing around 10/10 scores every time a band’s newest release drops, what does it mean when their next one is even better? Do you pull a Nigel Tufnel and go up to eleven? And does every subsequent album get a higher and higher score?

I suppose that’s one benefit of not using numerical scores here at NCS. Our readers are forced to actively engage with what we write in order to find out what we really think about an album, rather than just lazily relying on context-less numbers that never give you the full picture.

So when I say, as a huge fan of this band, that their latest album ultimately falls a little short of the stupendously high bar set by both Vertikal and Mariner, you shouldn’t be disheartened. Because this is still Cult of Luna we’re talking about, and A Dawn to Fear remains a thrillingly heavy, emotionally resonant journey regardless. Continue reading »

ROADBURN 2018, A PHOTO RECORD: DAY 1

Concert Reviews No Responses »

May 212018

The 2018 edition of Roadburn Festival is in the history books. From April 19th through April 22nd at the 013 venue in Tilburg, The Netherlands, metal fans got the chance to choose from among performances by more than 100 bands across four stages and a fascinating array of musical genres. NCS was fortunate to be represented by the fantastic photographer Teddie Taylor, who made a visual record of the event for us.

We left it to Teddie to decide which bands to see; no doubt she had a lot of difficult decisions to make — and we had difficult decisions of our own in determining which of her images to share with you (they’re all really damned good!). We’re dividing this collection of pics into four parts, one for each day of Roadburn 2018. We asked Teddie to introduce herself first, to those of you who may not be familiar with her work:

“I am an Alabama transplant currently residing in the glorious swamp that is New Orleans. Growing up, I regularly went on adventures to photograph the flora and fauna of the Gulf Coast and thought I’d eventually pursue nature photography. I’ve always been involved with the arts, whether it be attempting to dance or taking vocal lessons, and fell hard and fast into music photography during a college internship at the local rock radio station. A few years and seemingly hundreds of deafening nights in small bars later and I am an intern at Relapse Records and Earsplit PR and travel regularly to interview and take photos of musicians I adore. I apologize in advance if my tall, camera-hauling self blocks your view or whacks you with a camera during a show.”

And with that preamble, here are some of Teddie’s photos from the first day at Roadburn 2018: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2016’s MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 7): IHSAHN, CULT OF LUNA AND JULE CHRISTMAS, DISILLUSION

Exceptions to the Rule, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2016 7 Responses »

Jan 092017

I took a break yesterday from my rollout of this year’s Most Infectious Song list but am back at it again today, and every day this week, barring a meteor strike. For those who have just blundered into this evolving list for the first time, you can check out the previous picks and an explanation for what the list is about by clicking this link.

Some days I include two songs in the installments of this list, and sometimes three, which is what I have today. This is another instance when this particular grouping made sense to me, but I don’t pretend that I have good sense so you be the judge. And if the inclusion of clean vocals in this collection rubs you the wrong way, be patient. Tomorrow I’m returning to much nastier fare.

IHSAHN

I’m going to start with some “Mass Darkness“, which will be found on Arktis, the latest solo album by Vegard Sverre Tveitan, aka Ihsahn. My colleague Andy Synn wrote our review of the album, characterizing it as “easily the most gleamingly melodic, intimately accessible… and, yes, poppy, album that the ever-adversarial artiste has put his name to thus far”, while “still very much a Progressive album underneath the glitz and glamour”. Continue reading »

DAMNATION FESTIVAL 2016

Concert Reviews 4 Responses »

Nov 082016

(Our man in the UK, Andy Synn, attended Damnation Festival 2016 in Leeds on November 5, and provides this report along with videos he made.)

Oh Damnation Festival how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

Whereas too many other events seem content to book the same big-name crowd-pleasers, year in and year out, buttressed by an interchangeable selection of generic sound-alikes and contrived gimmicks – all carefully selected purely for their mundane mass-appeal – the Damnation team seem to operate on an unwavering ethos of only booking the bands they truly like, bands (big and small) that they truly believe in, who have something unique or special to offer.

This is how every edition of the festival features an array of bands from multiple different styles, from Death to Prog to Doom to Hardcore to Sludge (and beyond), from across the length and breadth of the underground Metal scene coexisting under one roof and why, over the years, Damnation has seen everyone from Ahab to Asphyx, Carcass to Katatonia, Mono to My Dying Bride, playing to the sort of packed crowds that are a regular occurrence in Europe, but which only rarely seem to be achievable here in the UK.

This helps make Damnation Festival’s line-up a much more interesting affair than many of their peers, as the organisers seem to operate on the principal of “if you build it, they will come”, putting their faith in the belief that the UK scene doesn’t just want to be fed the same old bands and the same old performances, time and time again. And this year was no different, with a wide variety of different acts, of different styles, on display, coupled with a bunch of exclusive performances which practically justified the ticket price on their own! Continue reading »

ROADBURN 2016: A PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY (DAY ONE)

Metal News 5 Responses »

May 022016

The 2016 edition of the Roadburn festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands, is now in the history books. It was the first edition of the festival to be presented at the newly renovated 013 venue, and it boasted a typically impressive and diverse line-up of bands. While none of the NCS scribes was on hand for this year’s event, we do have photos of many of the performances, thanks to Kris T. Therrian of 17 seconds photography, and beginning today we’ll be providing them for your viewing pleasure.

We’ve divided these photo collections into four parts, one for each day of the festival, and we’ll roll out the remaining three installments over the next three days. Many thanks to Kris for letting us share these memories with you. For more info about her work, visit these links: Continue reading »

CULT OF LUNA: “MARINER” (A COLLABORATION WITH JULIE CHRISTMAS)

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 3 Responses »

Apr 132016

(Andy Synn reviews the new collaborative album between Cult of Luna and Julie Christmas, which was released on April 8. Accompanying photos are by Pär Olofsson.)

The name Cult of Luna should need no introduction or explanation to long-time readers of this site. After all, the stupendous Swedes have dwelled amongst the ranks of Metal’s mightiest heroes for a solid fifteen years now, and yours truly even selected their phenomenal Vertikal as the best album of 2013 (beating out stiff competition from the mighty Gorguts in the process).

The name Julie Christmas, however, might not be quite as familiar, though she certainly has considerable prestige and pedigree of her own, having acted as vocalist for both much-loved Doom/Post Metal troupe Battle of Mice and sludgy noisemongers Made Out of Babies, as well as forging her own career as a solo artist and frequent collaborator with other members of the Rock and Metal community.

Now, hopefully, this whistle-stop introduction should help give you at least a tentative grasp of why the idea of the two artists collaborating was met with such awe in certain quarters, and why Mariner has been one of 2016’s most highly anticipated albums ever since it was first announced. Continue reading »

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