The Long Road North is Cult of Luna’s ninth full-length record, and the final piece in a trilogy of releases also including 2019’s A Dawn to Fear and last year’s The Raging River EP (Red Creek Records). According to vocalist / guitarist Johannes Persson, “The Long Road North is a title that symbolizes the mental journey I went through a few years ago. The lyric to the song was one of the first that I wrote when we started writing again after Mariner [from 2016]… If A Dawn To Fear and The Raging River were born from making sense of some sort of emotional chaos, The Long Road North is an analogy for finding a way out of it and taking the first step towards where I want to be.”
In many ways The Long Road North provides exactly what one would expect, and want from Cult of Luna: punishingly heavy riffs, dark soundscapes, anguished screams and extended song arrangements make up a large portion of the album. But in other ways this offering subverts expectations. For all its undeniable weight, power and bleakness, this is an incredibly dynamic album. There are many segments where raw power gives way to more subdued, contemplative atmospherics — “Beyond I” with its eerie ambience and folk-tinged guest vocals from Mariam Wallentin, and the brooding jangle guitar build-up of “Into the Night”, for example. The record is also exquisitely arranged, both in the sense of the layered orchestration (exemplified by the luscious and dense textures of “Full Moon”) and in its idiosyncratic use of chords and harmony (such as the way “An Offering to the Wild”) weaves its way mournfully between different minor keys.
All of that said, there is no doubt that The Long Road North is a punishingly heavy album. There are also many sections of pure (expertly crafted) headbanging doom riffery, where for a few moments Cult of Luna sound almost like a conventional rock band. The record also repeatedly builds up to massive-sounding climaxes of hypnotic and resolutely crushing post-metal, where monolithic downtuned guitars clash with trembling synth noise. During the most frenzied and urgent sections, when the distorted screams become positively demonic, the guitars roar and swirl, the synths pulsate, and the tense snare drum and cymbal rhythms become almost hyperactive, there is a feeling of cataclysmic immensity, as though this is the soundtrack to the end of the world.
The mood here is indeed somewhat apocalyptic in general. There is pain, anguish, desperation and fear aplenty. There is also an equally bleak, but more tender, sombre and sorrowful side to the album. For example, “Into The Night” features a bluesy melodic snarled voice, along with evocative organ and electric piano parts, whilst “Full Moon” borrows from the Spaghetti Western canon of dark and strident blues guitar, and “Blood Upon Stone” makes use of guests Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz (both from Phoenix), who add cathartic post-punk guitars to the otherworldly panorama. Drummer Thomas Hedlund makes magnificent use of the snare drum as a whole instrument in itself during some of these more downcast sections.
At 69 minutes (and with only nine songs), the overall experience is nothing if not epic. Due to this and the sheer vastness and density of the record, It will take most people a few listens for The Long Road North to really get under their skin. Indeed, part of me wonders whether the band have tried to pack too much in here — whether they could have trimmed it back by 20 minutes or so. But perhaps that would have sacrificed something of the deferred gratification experience of being able to gradually unpack and makes sense of this sprawling saga of despair and determination.
As the cinematic quasi-orchestral noise-infused ambience of album closer “Beyond I” fades out, the feeling is one of having experienced a long, arduous, cathartic and bleak journey through the extremities of some other world. Perhaps in some way that journey might help us to make sense of the existential dread we often find ourselves confronted with over here on planet Earth. Either way, The Long Road North, tortuous and demanding but equally sublime and transcendent, is a route well worth embarking upon.
The Long Road North will be released on 11th February 2022 via Red Creek Records//Metal Blade Records. Buy the album here: https://red-crk.com/
8 / 10
DUNCAN EVANS