“At the end of Vertikal, we stood in the cold harshness of the mechanical city and looked up onto the stars. We lost ourselves in the awe of their grace and thought that maybe the answer is to be found above. The ship was leaking and by the look of it, our home was dying. No room for fear when a greater call demands your full attention. So, we left… Onward, forward. Like the old seafarers, we explored the vastness of space. Not bound by physical laws we pass the speed of light and chase the expansion of space until we reach its limit. And then, we continued on and disappeared. This is our story.”

And then they returned. Changed, and now with a challenging and captivating new voice in Julie Christmas (ex-Battle of Mice, ex-Made Out of Babies), but in many ways, still the same.

I’ve never heard her before, but she’s an inspired addition. Part Bjork and part Siouxsie Sioux – sometimes affecting a childlike call (“A Greater Call”) and sometimes a mysterious sneer (“Chevron”). It’s a welcome and magnetic performance. Her screamed and feral vocals are a bit of an acquired taste, but the music helps ground them – it’s hard not to be swept away by the power of tracks like “Cygnus” or “The Wreck of the S.S. Needle.” The juxtaposition of shrill screams and sludgy, martial thrum does gel much better with headphones; you’ll also catch a lot more of the cold, otherworldly effects flowing in and out of the mix.

As for Johannes Persson, his vocals are more accompaniment this time than starring role. He provides shouts and bellows as counterpoint to Christmas’ croons and sighs. Together, they create a wonderful complement to the band’s soft vs heavy dynamics. Persson only takes the lead on the mournful “Approaching Transition,” with a haunted and watery gurgle for most of the track before he finally fills his lungs and explodes with a roar.

As for the music, it’s as cinematic and thrilling as Vertikal, and works with a very similar palette. If you loved that album – as I did – then you can consider this a satisfying reprise. Once again, Cult of Luna has found catharsis and beauty in crescendoes and crashes, and in the layered murmurs of each deep and atmospheric track. Christmas’ vocals ultimately make the greatest impression here and bring the most life to another gloriously desolate and hypnotic journey – one I’ll be making many times throughout the year.

Enter Sweden’s Cult of Luna, whose progressive post-metal/sludge sound is the ideal musical analog for the film’s harsh expressionist palette and its themes of oppression, revolt, catharsis and tragedy. The band’s heavy/light ebb and flow is rendered here with a bright, gleaming coldness that I haven’t heard from them since the alien drone of 2004’s Salvation. Previous album Eternal Kingdom had a rustic and weathered twang, but that’s now replaced by influences from early 80s synth/cinema like Vangelis, John Carpenter or Tangerine Dream. You’ll hear that frozen loveliness in “The One” and its reprise “The Sweep” – like rays of starlight on an apocalyptic horizon – or in the sci-fi warble that vibrates through the center of the lumbering “Synchronicity” and the bleak, dirge-like “Mute Departure.”

While these embellishments amplify Vertikal’s atmosphere of futuristic misery, it’s Cult of Luna’s well-honed sense of dynamics and flow that really make this a captivating and hypnotic journey. Tracks like “I: The Weapon” or my album favorite “In Awe Of” start as massive juggernauts, with echoing shouts like working-class chants manning a labyrinth of blastpits. Each then drifts into a complex jangle of tones and thrums that vibrate with eerily beautiful melody. Vertikal’s best moments sound like a first-person fly-through the heart of an epic mechanical technopolis. Down in its depths, every cog and every piston rumbles, twists and churns with ceaseless efficiency, kept oiled by the blood of its workers and lit by the glow of a thousand furnaces.

You won’t find easy thrills or quick catharsis here, yet it’s explosive and overwhelming all the same. 18-minute centerpiece “Vicarious Redemption” makes this abundantly clear – it takes its time luring you into a lulled and dreamlike state before it brings the sledgehammer down. The smart and elegant addition of those 80s synths and Blade Runner aesthetic was already a plus in my book, but I really love how Cult of Luna has eschewed the usual industrial bells and whistles in Vertikal. No hissing pistons or clanking metal, no mechanized vocals, no flittering blips and beeps. Instead, the band has taken their angular and singular approach to metal and crafted the loveliest of cacophonies, and like Metropolis’ haunting golden automatrix, it’s at once mechanical and organic.

Yes, it’s only January, but Vertikal is already an early favorite for my 2013 year-end list, and I think it’s also the band’s most complete and compelling album to date.

The FIRE WAS BORN DVD is due to be released on March 23rd, 2009 as part of a special edition version of the band’s latest album, ETERNAL KINGDOM, except for in the band’s home country of Sweden, where it
will be released as a separate DVD only. Check out a trailer for the DVD at http://www.youtube.com/watch\?v=QDSbz_K8mw8

CULT OF LUNA fans in Australia and New Zealand can catch the band live at the following much-anticipated shows:

10 Feb 2009 – Auckland, New Zealand – Transmission Room

12 Feb 2009 – Brisbane, Australia – The Tivoli

14 Feb 2009 – Sydney, Australia – Manning Bar

15 Feb 2009 – Melbourne, Australia – The HiFi

17 Feb 2009 – Adelaide, Australia – HQ

18 Feb 2009 – Perth, Australia – The Capitol

For more CULT OF LUNA news and info, head to
http://www.myspace.com/cultofluna

 I decided to give them another chance though as I loved The Beyond so much. I have mixed emotions about this to be honest. While this is a heavier album than the last two, it is rather repetitive. They use the same signature riffs that appear on all four previous albums, backed by a heavy distorted bass and solid drumming. The start of the album is quite good but from there it just becomes rather ponderous. If you’re up for moments of great heaviness punctuated by extended portions of ambience or silence then this is really the album for you.

Sadly they have followed the same trend that Isis has for me in that I simply can’t get into them anymore. Thanks to the keyboard they add some rather bizarre sounds and instrumentation; the most notable would be the chimes in the song “Ghost Trail”. I note these because I cannot help it, I despise chimes. They also throw in three short interludes that don’t really qualify as songs but act as bridges between songs.

This is a decent album but they tread on the same ground again and again and it’s about as interesting as watching someone pacing.