It should go without saying but In The Shadow Of Your Shadow is not a quick, casual listen. By the edict of Cult Of Luna—as spoken by frontman Johannes Persson, “Stagnation is the only thing that scares me”—it never would be. As one of the pioneers of European post-metal, they almost have a duty to be at its creative vanguard, something which has been a constant over their almost-three-decades of existence. Even if not everything can be a spacefaring doom opus with Julie Christmas, Cult Of Luna are yet to slouch.
Something about In The Shadow Of Your Shadow seems to move beyond the ‘normal’, though. It’s an album about loss, which is already an ample opportunity to drill into more primal, punishing emotions. Add to that the fact that this is Cult Of Luna, and there’s something even more raw and grisly that comes through here. It’s a gripping listen, albeit one that you have to be pretty braced for.
That is to say that In The Shadow Of Your Shadow is something of a tour de force from the off. A 71-minute runtime already puts it in the upper bracket of their release lengths, and you really do feel it as the album goes along. Not in the sense that it drags, but more that Cult Of Luna’s deliberacy of pace and vision incentivises something this deep and crushing. Even at the 11- or 12-minute mark, Breach and Burial don’t taper off or feel as though they’re lacking for direction. One More Day, meanwhile, can’t quite match up, as the only one of these longer songs that doesn’t work all that well. Guest vocalist David Eugene Edwards takes over with an older, gothic vocal tone, only to find itself unable to fit among the doomier composition. It’s the one case where anything on In The Shadow… is needlessly elongated, and a pretty definite low point overall.
Between it and the rest, though, is a chasm a mile across. Cult Of Luna’s experience speaks for itself at this point, not just in proficiency but overall arrangement within. It’s what keeps this so alluring throughout, enriched by its themes. The title track, Sadness Will Reign and The Rift are all haunted by empty, disembodied voices, as if to eulogise loss as a component of all-consuming bleakness. Elsewhere, there are Kairos moments of time stopping on Breach and The Rift, almost carving out a void within these songs in which mindfulness and contemplation reside, before the darkness sweeps back in. On top of that, Persson’s vocals are just that gnarled and guttural, almost to where it can be impossible to make words out, and the muddied hollering functions as its own instrument.
There’s an unstoppability to Cult Of Luna that holds all of this together and prevents it from imploding under its own desolation. In The Shadow… has a forward thrust; it never languishes to an untenable degree. That’s established immediately on a title track presented like Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir falling into some gaping, extradimensional maw. The Rift, too, can circle around into what’s bordering on trad-metal, just a lot nastier in tone, especially in Andreas Johansson’s fanged bass. You probably don’t need to be told that this is a heavy album, but the way that Cult Of Luna manage their particular heaviness gives the album its edge. There’s the direct unfriendliness of Breach, or the tense, strained guitars of From Grey To Black that heave themselves along. Even the ‘softer’ songs tumble into Cult Of Luna’s abyss—the baleful interlude Landby, and the elegiac A Way Back, almost modelled after a dirge in the deep wilderness.
By the end of it all, you’re left rather drained, but in exactly the way that was intended. It goes back to the initial statement about this album—it’s not a quick, casual listen, and it’s not supposed to be. This is Cult Of Luna operating at their most effective, and independent in the way that progressive, extreme music should be. Nothing about In The Shadow… feels compromised or laid down by accident, or even unsure of what it’s meant to be. Cult Of Luna are just as creative as ever in the chosen field, even finding some new routes to explore and further show off said creativity. The result, then, is another great, forward-thinking album in a catalogue made up of nothing but.
For fans of: ISIS, Amenra, Russian Circles
‘In The Shadow Of Your Shadow’ by Cult Of Luna is out now on Red Crk Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
