band members
current:
Johannes Persson – guitars, vocals
Fredrik Kihlberg – guitar, vocals
Andreas Johansson – bass guitar
Thomas Hedlund – drums
Magnus Líndberg – percussion
Kristian Karlsson – keyboards, samples (2013–present)
touring:
David Johansson – guitar (2014–present)
former:
Klas Rydberg – vocals (1998-2012)
Erik Olofsson – guitar (1998–2014)
Fredrik Renström - bass guitar (1999)
Marco Hildén – drums (1999-2002)
Axel Stattin – bass guitar (2000-2002)
Anders Teglund – keyboards, samples, trumpet (2003–2013)
Cult of Luna is a Swedish metal band from Umeå founded in 1998. They often perform post-metal music similar to the contemporary bands Neurosis and Isis. The band signed to Earache Records in the early 2000s and released five albums, including the commercially successful albums Salvation (2004) and Somewhere Along the Highway (2006). After an extended period of inactivity, Cult of Luna returned with its Indie Recordings debut Vertikal (2013) and companion EP Vertikal II (2013), both drawing heavy inspiration from Fritz Lang's industrious and political 1927 film, Metropolis. The band has released its space-themed seventh album, Mariner (2016), featuring American vocalist Julie Christmas.
Cult of Luna's sound has progressed from early material being heavily doom metal influenced to one much less aggressive and more concerned with orchestration. Fans and critics have termed this sound post-metal. The band is considered to be at the forefront of the genre, along with contemporary proponents Neurosis and Isis.
Its songs are often long, slow, repetitive and crushing, heavy sections of distorted guitars often interspersed with orchestral interludes and extended, post-rock-esque forays. The group shuns conventional song structures, opting for a sound that evolves throughout a song, sometimes toward a climactic crescendo, instead of a verse-chorus-verse pattern. That style, incorporating sections of "light and dark" into their music, has led to comparisons with contemporaries such as Isis (with whom they have toured), Callisto and Pelican, as well as the significantly older Neurosis. Former singer Klas Rydberg, however, has stated that decidedly Radiohead are an influence. Lately the band as well as their contemporaries have been heavily influenced by Mogwai, particularly the use of guitar delay and melodic guitar playing.
As the band progressed, the imagery they employed became less overt and less "doom metal". In some ways, the albums showed a shift from anger with modern society as in Cult of Luna, to disgust with the ruling parties in The Beyond and Salvation. The video for single "Leave Me Here" is concerned with propaganda and tacit governmental control over the individual. Similar concerns are addressed in contemporaries Isis' Panopticon, centered on the theme of Big Brother-like government surveillance. Early material made Christian references; to the devil, Faust and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Over the course of following albums, these seem to have disappeared, though Salvation does have overarching spiritual themes.
Somewhere Along the Highway is slightly different from the previous releases in its thematic basis. It focuses on personal matters, specifically male loneliness, instead of macroscopic concerns addressed in previous albums.