Cult of Luna | website | facebook |
The Old Wind | facebook |
Released on January 29, 2016 via Pelagic Records
The second of the Pelagic Records split series teams former tour partners and mutual fans Cult of Luna with The Old Wind. It’s a marriage made in heaven, and (you’re way ahead of me) in hell. They’ve christened this hybrid little bastard Råångest, which is Swedish for ‘raw anxiety’. The title is apt, but only partially, representing as it does only one figure in a choir of emotions and tones that the record conjures. With further releases from both bands confirmed for a 2016 release this split EP acquires the feel of an intense trailer, but what a trailer it is.
Side A belongs to Cult of Luna, and while I was initially disappointed that their contribution consisted of only a single track – and a cover at that – I soon overcame the feeling once I heard the sheer quality of what they had produced. The cover in question is of ‘Last Will and Testament’ by Amebix, a much overlooked band recently discovered by COL guitarist and lead singer Johannes Person. He says that hearing them was like ‘discovering a musical father [he] never knew [he] had’. Well, if it’s the role of the child to kill the father then Cult of Luna have done so with their trademark intensity; both showing respect to the song’s creators and utterly wiping them out.
This cover is equal to a complete re-invention and re-invigoration; they’ve taken a bonfire and turned it into a volcano. So much so that to return to the original is to hear what now feels like a mere blueprint. If heaviness is your fix then there’s barely a comparison between the two: the central riff has been overhauled and accentuated by a guitar sound that is breathtakingly deep, wide and ferocious enough to make your bones drone. Johannes revises the vocal with his excoriating and heartfelt roar, hitting that unique emotive frequency that makes him the best in the business. Also present are the haunting laser-like synth sounds that made Vertikal sound so visionary and helped to cement COL as the most interesting and majestic band in post-metal. I can think of no other artists who sprawl on the axis across the transcendent and the atavistic, the sacred and profane, with quite such reach and power. Their passion is so manifest that to listen to them is to be irradiated, and they bring that passion to everything they create, making this cover their own, making the unoriginal original after all.
Side B is blown through by The Old Wind, marking their first release since 2013’s Feast on Your Gone, which exploded onto the scene like a depth charge of guttural, aggressively atmospheric metal. They have since upped their game; deeper, heavier, more accomplished, the two tracks on this split are bristling with relentless intent and rock solid execution. That being said they haven’t set their sights on any radical evolution of their sound and still retain allegiance to the droning, doomy and hypnotic core riffs that dominate both the tracks and their overall approach to metal; hypnotic, ruthless, molten.
The writing here is both concise and precise. Caught in a crossfire between two unnerving chords, moments of blistering tension escalate as the banshee vocals shoot up like rockets, then the tension is loosed into doomy, ringing chords, staccato drumming and more delicate instrumentation, but no time is wasted in circumnavigating back to a vortex of even more twisted up tension, to heaviness laminated by heaviness, and having just caught your breath you are subsequently pummelled again and again.
With beefy riffs that roll over themselves like caterpillar tracks on a tank The Old Wind definitely invoke the overlords known as Neurosis, but do so without overt derivation, carving out a lateral track into their own post-metal fields. If this release is any indicator of what we may come to expect from them I can see a time when The Old Wind will become indispensible and ascend into the post-metal Pantheon.
This split EP is short and extremely aggressive, like a pit-bull, or a Scottish dwarf. It’s essential listening for die-hard fans and highly recommended for fans of those bands who commit to progressive and brutal art-metal with a degree of skill, emotion and intensity that few others are able to summon. It’s short though, too short (did I mention it was short?). I like my anxiety raw, but prefer a portion large enough to feast upon until the blood runs down my chin. As it stands you will just be left salivating for more. Fortunately more is on its way from both bands, who are just checking in with us here, offering a taste of other impending releases. Keep your eye to the horizon, keep your ear to the ground, listen, for the approach of thunderous hooves.
