Cult of Luna

Cult of Luna formed in Umeå, Sweden in 1998 from the remnants of a hardcore band called Eclipse, and spent the following two decades building a post-metal vocabulary that owes its foundations to Neurosis while arriving somewhere no predecessor had quite been. Songs stretch routinely past eight minutes, constructed from slow-motion sludge guitar and long arcs of tension that accumulate toward release rather than any conventional chorus. Salvation (2004) and Somewhere Along the Highway (2006) established the band internationally; Vertikal (2013) drew its industrial weight from Fritz Lang's Metropolis; Mariner (2016), recorded with vocalist Julie Christmas, mapped outer space instead. Now operating on their own Red Creek Recordings label, the band continues releasing work that treats the album as a single, indivisible thing.