“Cinematic” is a word so tethered to Cult of Luna’s hip that using it to describe them is cliche by now. It’s plain to see why you would, though. Their extended post-metal suites are built on rising drama and crescendos, mirroring the structure of classical overtures, while the roars of frontman Johannes Persson are as earth-scorching as any Roland Emmerich apocalypse. Albums such as ‘Salvation’ and ‘A Dawn to Fear’ are essentially feature length.
‘The Long Road North’ pushes that filmic scope into all-out blockbuster bombast. Instantly, opening track Cold Burn delivers a “BWAHM!” like the foghorn of a cruise ship captained by Hans Zimmer. The thunderous drumming of dual percussionists Thomas Hedlund and Magnus Lindberg only accentuates the grandeur. Persson, meanwhile, still has the growl of a kaiju, and his sludge riffing rockets into a sci-fi cosmos when backed by Kristian Karlsson’s synths.
An Offering to the Wild captures ‘The Long Road North’ at its most awe-inspiringly dense by tag-teaming with Colin Stetson, who scored modern horror classic Hereditary.
The 13-minute centrepiece escalates from the simplest instrumental melody to a cavalcade of claustrophobic noise. The drums scurry and the guitars squeal in agony, before the tension is punctured by a riff muddy and groovy enough to make Sleep guitarist Matt Pike lose his mind.
Quainter soundscapes soothe on the subsequent Into the Night, where guitarist Fredrik Kihlberg counters Persson’s approach with a smoother, if less characterful, croon. On the similarly tranquil Beyond I, the clean vocals are donated by Mariam Wallentin, composing a hypnotic soliloquy that is juxtaposed with the pulse-pounding action of predecessor The Silver Arc.
Starring the six-piece’s most immense songwriting to date and strewn with tasteful cameos, ‘The Long Road North’ is the biggest and, very feasibly, best album of Cult of Luna’s career. If music were a meritocracy, this would affirm their place among heavy metal’s A-list.
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