Related to your comments on it feeling "cold" or "metallic": "Cult of Luna first noted that their two previous albums, Somewhere Along the Highway and Eternal Kingdom, had very rural conceptual theme to them, so the band made the conscious effort to aim for a city theme with Vertikal. Common themes that arose...[included]: industrial, factory, monotone, repetitive, harsh and grey. Cult of Luna drummer and percussionist Thomas Hedlund commented on the band's interest in the film, stating: 'We wanted to find a contrast to the previous albums. They were more rural, earthy and organic in a way. This time we wanted to explore the city; the machinery that is a society. Metropolis dealt with questions about belonging, the need for a change, human vs. machines, love. All of which were topics that we found inspiring in the making of this album.'' The band has stated that Vertikal's sonic themes include 'machinery, repetition and clear, linear structures.' Cult of Luna also wanted to achieve a more 'static' sound on the album. To do this, the band recorded with more downpicking on the guitars, the drums parts had the cymbals recorded separately, and the band recorded the sounds of, 'hitting metal rods and ladders and stairways [and] cutting them up like beats.' For the first time in Cult of Luna's career, keyboards and electronics became an integral part of the writing process, whereas before they were just an afterthought."
Cult of Luna is 100% a mood band. If I'm not in "that" mood I don't emotionally resonate with them much. If I am though, they're one of my favorites. And it's not blasphemous to call this soundtrack music. They're experts at taking you on a journey with their music. And using your mind's eye to conjure up visual imagery or story concepts is a big part of the experience. A least for me.
Ne Obliviscaris is basically my 2nd favorite band, but I still need a certain mood (state of mind?) for them. Unfortunately I haven't been in that mood in a while 😛 maybe their next album will help me go back.
For me, Cult of Luna does a great job of building up tension but, the tension rises and falls like a tide, with waves within. You get more of that by doing full albums
Perhaps my favorite track from my favorite CoL album. I love how they started mixing in more textural elements on this album rather than just the slow build to crushing and massively heavy climaxes; it gives the album such a broader sound palette and more breathing room, and this track is a perfect example. They still have the best slow-burn to epic climaxes out there, but I often felt like on their earlier albums it could become a bit of a one-trick-pony and I loved hearing them broadening their style just a bit without minimizing what they already did so well. As for connecting to them, I do agree with one of the comments who calls them a mood band. Because they have such a singular style you really have to be in the right space to get into their very specific kind of tension building and release.
Woo hoo! another CoL song! But it sounds like the song gave you the feeling or reaction as to what the entire album's concept is which is kind of amazing. And as you said in the beginning it *is* inspired by the movie Metropolis so very much city vibes.
Oh snap, totally forgot that I checked out their 2022 album. And yeah, Stetson's track was my favorite from the album but it also felt the most distant from CoL's usual sound.
(19:48....i wrote this before i saw this...) "In awe of" from this album is my favorit cult of luna song! It was the one that got me in to them :P You should check it out :)
I've actually reacted to that twice! The first time I wasn't quite in the right headspace AND it was the first time hearing their style proper (the first was with Julie Christmas). I was a bit harsh on it since I expected something totally different. Here's the second chance I gave it ruclips.net/video/iHcDe8NWCgU/видео.html
The electronics are mostly used on the Vertikal and Mariner albums, and to some extent The Raging River as well. I’m not sure about the albums that came before Vertikal, however, because I don’t really go back and listen to those albums, since I can’t really connect with what was coming out during the earlier days of Post-Metal. There are very few electronic elements on their album A Dawn To Fear (which is my personal favorite album of theirs,) and a little more on their latest album The Long Road North (the song Cold Burn from that album is one of my favorite songs in their discography.) I’d agree with what a few other people are saying in the comments that it’s more impactful to listen to Cult Of Luna’s albums as a whole, but even then their albums are usually very dense (especially A Dawn To Fear and The Long Road North,) so it may take a few listens for everything to sink in. I first listened to Cult Of Luna when I found out about Mariner, but when I listened to that album I didn’t really connect with it. Shortly after that A Dawn To Fear came out and I had the same problem that I did with Mariner. I thought there was too much going on in the album, the overall sound was too dense and everything kind of blended together, but after repeated listens everything fell into place for me, and now Cult Of Luna (at least everything from Vertikal onward) is one of my favorite metal bands ever
Luv Lang’s film so skipped around with the silent while watching yer review. Kinda fun. Fav parts were the first 7ish minutes of this music paired with the intro of the machines, and the zombified workers in depressed uniform lock step, all setting up for the dismal sci-fi atmosphere. The movies theme being is that of overcoming the tragic differences of societies classes(‘class divide’ as u stated)and in the end these lyrics do say “Reject reviled wisdom, no powers are divine” and “No gods, no masters, no rulers, and no kings? What you reject, I bring”…think these speak to the theme greatly. Cool film akin react🌿
It's very far-fetched, but you trying to express the feeling of grandeur reminded me of Immanuel Kant's esthetics. He suggested two different kinds of beauty: the beautiful and the sublime. The beautiful is pleasing, pretty. This feeling works in a similar way as solving a puzzle or completing a gestalt: you've done something and you feel good. It gives your brain enough sweet thought along the lines: "see, you know what's happening, you figured this out, all goes as predicted." I think Kant would call modern pop music beautiful. Quirky, surprising stuff, traditional comedy also work like this: first they baffle you, but then you "get it," it clicks and you feel satisfaction and joy. The sublime, on the other hand, transcends human ability. It's so otherworldly your brain can't solve it. Views of mountains, or from the top of a mountain, waterfalls, storms overwhelm our senses with its enormous physicality. Surrealism, anti-humor, and horror (especially "weird fiction," think Lovecraft) leave our logic, reason, ability to rationalize the world confused. We understand there's "something truly great," something "awe-some" there, but we are simply not capable of putting our finger on it. This evokes a mix of delight and anxiety in us, because it tests our limits and, in a way, promises us to show what's behind the limits-but never does. I guess your skyscraper experience has a hint of Kantian sublime in it-same as this song. I think Autechre is also good at this. But if Cult of Luna shows the sublime of grandeur, Autechre shows the sublime of inhuman/illogical. Maybe you can remember more examples of "sublime" music in Kantian terms.
I’ve listened to Cult of Luna before and remember having trouble getting into them, but don’t remember why. So this music was fantastic, really setting a great atmosphere. I was all in. Then the vocals kicked in and then I remembered. Just not a fan of their vocals. I would have preferred this as an instrumental.
This is why a lot of people have liked the Collab with Julie Christmas on Mariner, it gives there band another layer and a different flavor with the female vocals.
Same here. In fact I even mentioned it late in the video. Julie brings a dynamic quality that contrasts (in a positive way) with the more static atmospheres of the music.
Ok, trying to fill in some blanks here. On why these songs kind of fail to connect with you, well, I'd say that their way of craftig songs kind of goes against what you look for in a piece of music. This is 19 minutes of song based on essentially a single idea broken down to several moving parts which are layered and delayered as the rhythm of the song demands it. You said it yourself many times that you favour a more "actively" progressive approach to songwriting and that kind of goes at odds with CoL's deliberate minimalism. So, there's that to consider, and also the fact that yes, this is a band that's very much about mood, and listening to it trying to gather as many tidbits to do a coherent analysis after one listen also kind of opposes what the band is conceptually. You are very correct about the songs having a cinematic feel, though, and this runs paralel to not only Cult of Luna, but also Neurosis who were arguably the main influence in CoL's sound, at least early on. And Neurosis would always make much ado about the fact that they regarded the guy who did their lights show as the 6th member of the band, and had a couple of their albums released with accompanying visual tracks. Cult of Luna did the same. The first 3 tracks of their "A Dawn to fear" album form a small movie which you can see on RUclips and early this year the song Cold Burn was actually released with a videogame ( called "the long road north", which you can play for free on steam) Regarding this album, there's some fan made tracks doing the rounds on RUclips that marry its songs to the images fo the movie it was inspired by, which not only work (mostly) wonderfully but also lend credence to what you said. I especially recommend "In Awe of", which I believ you already reacted to. The coldness you identify in the track really fits the movies themes of a futurist capitalist dystopia ( which incidentally also served as clear basis of inspiration for the first Bioshock game, its objectivism meets Art Nouveau is taken straight out of this movie.) A note on the electronics, this album put them really in your face when compared to previous ones, but the synths guy is a permanent fixture of the band, often adding to the wall of sound with unconventional texture work. It's another thing they kind of took from Neurosis, the unconventional use of keyboards.
Yup, I think CoL will always be the band I appreciate from a distance. They absolutely deliver on every concept they set out to do but it's so distant from what I typically look for. Still, I think I'd like to listen to one of their albums. Given I've checked out 2 other tracks from this album I might just give Vertikal a listen sometime. Maybe I need the work as a whole to really "get" what they're doing.
@@CriticalReactions I would say Vertikal is a great album to check out on your own time, Salvation would be a good one to do if you were ever to react to a full album
@@CriticalReactions I'd say that if you do so, then listen to either it or Mariner and do it in your own time while not too worried about overanalysing. ANd if you ever do a "music with visuals" theme, then check out one of the vids I mentioned. That just might make it click. I know that knowing about the visuals of Metropolis did help a bunch with Vertikal, so...
Album rankings from me. 1. Somewhere along the highway 2. Eternal kingdom + Salvation 3. Mariner + A dawn to fear + Vertikal 4. The beyond + The long road north + The raging river 5. Self titled + Eviga riket 6. Vertikal II
The whole vibe-based music thing tends to hit me in a fairly visual sense. A lot of the black metal that doesn’t hit for you tends to evoke water imagery in my head. If I throw on some Emperor or other more explosive/aggressive BM, if I close my eyes, I see a thunderstorm. The more atmospheric stuff tends to bring out more of a slow, soaking, steady rain, or maybe a forest with mist so thick you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you. With the whole Vertikal album, I get something akin to a combination of hell and the descriptions of the D&D plane of Mechanus, a maze of gears, looming buildings that appear to lean in over the streets, the smell of acrid industrial fumes on the air, a man is being brought out of a factory on a stretcher following a preventable industrial accident and no-one cares, sort of the pinnacle of Industrial Revolution capitalism through a lens of this is actually just hell. I couldn’t tell you much about the music on the album except that it does feature more electronic music than their other albums, but I can definitely wax poetic about the vibes. In focusing on analyzing the music, you probably are going about their music “wrong” if your goal is to enjoy it; it’s better to just sit back and vibe for that. With that said, I keep watching these analyses of music I enjoy that you probably won’t because you keep finding things that just blew right past me, things that deepen my understanding of and appreciation of the band, so maybe you’re listening to it “wrong”, but in so doing, you’re providing a service to the band’s fans in a way that a glowing review that was focused on the forest rather than the trees probably wouldn’t.
There’s a podcast I listen to occasionally that once described Celtic Frost’s Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh as “The sort of thing you’d hear as part of some sort of performance art piece, where it’s played and images are projected onto white walls in an empty room.” I think you could say that about a lot of the music that bounces off of you; you describing this as “soundtrack music” kind of seems to hit a similar idea. This is the soundtrack to a particularly dystopian Industrial Revolution silent film.
I tend to see imagery with this stuff as well, especially when I'm listening casually, and completely agree that it would work great for art installations.
@@CriticalReactions I wonder if this is a case where a well made music video can complete a song. I know a lot of music videos are pretty paint by numbers, but the opportunity does exist.
@@VestigialLung Of course. I love well thought out music videos that feel more like multimedia projects than a simple visual addition to a primarily audio based artwork. I can't think of any off the top of my head but I know I've seen some music videos that elevate the song.
![[BadComedian] - Русские ЭМО СУМЕРКИ (твой личный сорт кринжа)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DO_lijyx-No/mqdefault.jpg)
Related to your comments on it feeling "cold" or "metallic":
"Cult of Luna first noted that their two previous albums, Somewhere Along the Highway and Eternal Kingdom, had very rural conceptual theme to them, so the band made the conscious effort to aim for a city theme with Vertikal. Common themes that arose...[included]: industrial, factory, monotone, repetitive, harsh and grey.
Cult of Luna drummer and percussionist Thomas Hedlund commented on the band's interest in the film, stating: 'We wanted to find a contrast to the previous albums. They were more rural, earthy and organic in a way. This time we wanted to explore the city; the machinery that is a society. Metropolis dealt with questions about belonging, the need for a change, human vs. machines, love. All of which were topics that we found inspiring in the making of this album.''
The band has stated that Vertikal's sonic themes include 'machinery, repetition and clear, linear structures.' Cult of Luna also wanted to achieve a more 'static' sound on the album. To do this, the band recorded with more downpicking on the guitars, the drums parts had the cymbals recorded separately, and the band recorded the sounds of, 'hitting metal rods and ladders and stairways [and] cutting them up like beats.' For the first time in Cult of Luna's career, keyboards and electronics became an integral part of the writing process, whereas before they were just an afterthought."
They certainly delivered on their goals with this track. This track was definitely evoking of machinery while aiming for repetition and linear ideas.
Cult of Luna is 100% a mood band. If I'm not in "that" mood I don't emotionally resonate with them much. If I am though, they're one of my favorites. And it's not blasphemous to call this soundtrack music. They're experts at taking you on a journey with their music. And using your mind's eye to conjure up visual imagery or story concepts is a big part of the experience. A least for me.
Oooo I'm gonna have to borrow that phrase -- "mood band". But yeah totally with ya on CoL being a mood band.
Ne Obliviscaris is basically my 2nd favorite band, but I still need a certain mood (state of mind?) for them. Unfortunately I haven't been in that mood in a while 😛 maybe their next album will help me go back.
Vertikal I & II was not only inspired by the film but made to fit with the movie, it's by far my favorite version of Metropolis.
For me, Cult of Luna does a great job of building up tension but, the tension rises and falls like a tide, with waves within. You get more of that by doing full albums
Perhaps my favorite track from my favorite CoL album. I love how they started mixing in more textural elements on this album rather than just the slow build to crushing and massively heavy climaxes; it gives the album such a broader sound palette and more breathing room, and this track is a perfect example. They still have the best slow-burn to epic climaxes out there, but I often felt like on their earlier albums it could become a bit of a one-trick-pony and I loved hearing them broadening their style just a bit without minimizing what they already did so well. As for connecting to them, I do agree with one of the comments who calls them a mood band. Because they have such a singular style you really have to be in the right space to get into their very specific kind of tension building and release.
Woo hoo! another CoL song! But it sounds like the song gave you the feeling or reaction as to what the entire album's concept is which is kind of amazing. And as you said in the beginning it *is* inspired by the movie Metropolis so very much city vibes.
one of my favourites.. though i will highly recommend "Dark City, Dead Man" from the album "Somewhere along the Highway". It's a dark experience.
Cult Of Luna collaborated with Colin Stetson on a couple of tracks from their newest album. The two vibes meld together really well!
Oh snap, totally forgot that I checked out their 2022 album. And yeah, Stetson's track was my favorite from the album but it also felt the most distant from CoL's usual sound.
(19:48....i wrote this before i saw this...) "In awe of" from this album is my favorit cult of luna song! It was the one that got me in to them :P You should check it out :)
I've actually reacted to that twice! The first time I wasn't quite in the right headspace AND it was the first time hearing their style proper (the first was with Julie Christmas). I was a bit harsh on it since I expected something totally different. Here's the second chance I gave it ruclips.net/video/iHcDe8NWCgU/видео.html
@@CriticalReactions Right, I forgot that... I have seen both those reactions. hehe
quiet sections? check
loud sections? check
amazing transitions? check check
The electronics are mostly used on the Vertikal and Mariner albums, and to some extent The Raging River as well. I’m not sure about the albums that came before Vertikal, however, because I don’t really go back and listen to those albums, since I can’t really connect with what was coming out during the earlier days of Post-Metal. There are very few electronic elements on their album A Dawn To Fear (which is my personal favorite album of theirs,) and a little more on their latest album The Long Road North (the song Cold Burn from that album is one of my favorite songs in their discography.) I’d agree with what a few other people are saying in the comments that it’s more impactful to listen to Cult Of Luna’s albums as a whole, but even then their albums are usually very dense (especially A Dawn To Fear and The Long Road North,) so it may take a few listens for everything to sink in. I first listened to Cult Of Luna when I found out about Mariner, but when I listened to that album I didn’t really connect with it. Shortly after that A Dawn To Fear came out and I had the same problem that I did with Mariner. I thought there was too much going on in the album, the overall sound was too dense and everything kind of blended together, but after repeated listens everything fell into place for me, and now Cult Of Luna (at least everything from Vertikal onward) is one of my favorite metal bands ever
Oh man, as a fan since CoL first album.
Dive deep into Somewhere along the highway it's imo the best.
And eternal kingdom is the heaviest.
Don't miss out on Salvation! Fucking stellar album.
Luv Lang’s film so skipped around with the silent while watching yer review. Kinda fun. Fav parts were the first 7ish minutes of this music paired with the intro of the machines, and the zombified workers in depressed uniform lock step, all setting up for the dismal sci-fi atmosphere. The movies theme being is that of overcoming the tragic differences of societies classes(‘class divide’ as u stated)and in the end these lyrics do say “Reject reviled wisdom, no powers are divine” and “No gods, no masters, no rulers, and no kings? What you reject, I bring”…think these speak to the theme greatly. Cool film akin react🌿
That's a really neat way to listen to this. I should give that a spin next time.
I was eagerly awaiting for your reaction to the dubstep bit, did not disappoint.
Just saw them live for the 1st time 3 days ago. Theyre amazing live.
It's very far-fetched, but you trying to express the feeling of grandeur reminded me of Immanuel Kant's esthetics. He suggested two different kinds of beauty: the beautiful and the sublime.
The beautiful is pleasing, pretty. This feeling works in a similar way as solving a puzzle or completing a gestalt: you've done something and you feel good. It gives your brain enough sweet thought along the lines: "see, you know what's happening, you figured this out, all goes as predicted." I think Kant would call modern pop music beautiful. Quirky, surprising stuff, traditional comedy also work like this: first they baffle you, but then you "get it," it clicks and you feel satisfaction and joy.
The sublime, on the other hand, transcends human ability. It's so otherworldly your brain can't solve it. Views of mountains, or from the top of a mountain, waterfalls, storms overwhelm our senses with its enormous physicality. Surrealism, anti-humor, and horror (especially "weird fiction," think Lovecraft) leave our logic, reason, ability to rationalize the world confused. We understand there's "something truly great," something "awe-some" there, but we are simply not capable of putting our finger on it. This evokes a mix of delight and anxiety in us, because it tests our limits and, in a way, promises us to show what's behind the limits-but never does.
I guess your skyscraper experience has a hint of Kantian sublime in it-same as this song. I think Autechre is also good at this. But if Cult of Luna shows the sublime of grandeur, Autechre shows the sublime of inhuman/illogical. Maybe you can remember more examples of "sublime" music in Kantian terms.
One of my favorite albums ever
You got to check out the Eternal Kingdom album, their best in my opinion
I get what you're saying. This hits me just right, though.
I’ve listened to Cult of Luna before and remember having trouble getting into them, but don’t remember why. So this music was fantastic, really setting a great atmosphere. I was all in. Then the vocals kicked in and then I remembered. Just not a fan of their vocals. I would have preferred this as an instrumental.
This is why a lot of people have liked the Collab with Julie Christmas on Mariner, it gives there band another layer and a different flavor with the female vocals.
Same here. In fact I even mentioned it late in the video. Julie brings a dynamic quality that contrasts (in a positive way) with the more static atmospheres of the music.
Ok, trying to fill in some blanks here.
On why these songs kind of fail to connect with you, well, I'd say that their way of craftig songs kind of goes against what you look for in a piece of music. This is 19 minutes of song based on essentially a single idea broken down to several moving parts which are layered and delayered as the rhythm of the song demands it. You said it yourself many times that you favour a more "actively" progressive approach to songwriting and that kind of goes at odds with CoL's deliberate minimalism. So, there's that to consider, and also the fact that yes, this is a band that's very much about mood, and listening to it trying to gather as many tidbits to do a coherent analysis after one listen also kind of opposes what the band is conceptually.
You are very correct about the songs having a cinematic feel, though, and this runs paralel to not only Cult of Luna, but also Neurosis who were arguably the main influence in CoL's sound, at least early on. And Neurosis would always make much ado about the fact that they regarded the guy who did their lights show as the 6th member of the band, and had a couple of their albums released with accompanying visual tracks. Cult of Luna did the same. The first 3 tracks of their "A Dawn to fear" album form a small movie which you can see on RUclips and early this year the song Cold Burn was actually released with a videogame ( called "the long road north", which you can play for free on steam) Regarding this album, there's some fan made tracks doing the rounds on RUclips that marry its songs to the images fo the movie it was inspired by, which not only work (mostly) wonderfully but also lend credence to what you said. I especially recommend "In Awe of", which I believ you already reacted to. The coldness you identify in the track really fits the movies themes of a futurist capitalist dystopia ( which incidentally also served as clear basis of inspiration for the first Bioshock game, its objectivism meets Art Nouveau is taken straight out of this movie.)
A note on the electronics, this album put them really in your face when compared to previous ones, but the synths guy is a permanent fixture of the band, often adding to the wall of sound with unconventional texture work. It's another thing they kind of took from Neurosis, the unconventional use of keyboards.
Yup, I think CoL will always be the band I appreciate from a distance. They absolutely deliver on every concept they set out to do but it's so distant from what I typically look for. Still, I think I'd like to listen to one of their albums. Given I've checked out 2 other tracks from this album I might just give Vertikal a listen sometime. Maybe I need the work as a whole to really "get" what they're doing.
@@CriticalReactions I would say Vertikal is a great album to check out on your own time, Salvation would be a good one to do if you were ever to react to a full album
@@CriticalReactions I'd say that if you do so, then listen to either it or Mariner and do it in your own time while not too worried about overanalysing. ANd if you ever do a "music with visuals" theme, then check out one of the vids I mentioned. That just might make it click. I know that knowing about the visuals of Metropolis did help a bunch with Vertikal, so...
@@CriticalReactions I think A Dawn to Fear would be the best one to react to but I'm biased because it's my favorite album from them haha.
Album rankings from me.
1. Somewhere along the highway
2. Eternal kingdom + Salvation
3. Mariner + A dawn to fear + Vertikal
4. The beyond + The long road north + The raging river
5. Self titled + Eviga riket
6. Vertikal II
Have you reacted to Cult of Lilith? Will blow your mind
The whole vibe-based music thing tends to hit me in a fairly visual sense. A lot of the black metal that doesn’t hit for you tends to evoke water imagery in my head. If I throw on some Emperor or other more explosive/aggressive BM, if I close my eyes, I see a thunderstorm. The more atmospheric stuff tends to bring out more of a slow, soaking, steady rain, or maybe a forest with mist so thick you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you. With the whole Vertikal album, I get something akin to a combination of hell and the descriptions of the D&D plane of Mechanus, a maze of gears, looming buildings that appear to lean in over the streets, the smell of acrid industrial fumes on the air, a man is being brought out of a factory on a stretcher following a preventable industrial accident and no-one cares, sort of the pinnacle of Industrial Revolution capitalism through a lens of this is actually just hell.
I couldn’t tell you much about the music on the album except that it does feature more electronic music than their other albums, but I can definitely wax poetic about the vibes. In focusing on analyzing the music, you probably are going about their music “wrong” if your goal is to enjoy it; it’s better to just sit back and vibe for that. With that said, I keep watching these analyses of music I enjoy that you probably won’t because you keep finding things that just blew right past me, things that deepen my understanding of and appreciation of the band, so maybe you’re listening to it “wrong”, but in so doing, you’re providing a service to the band’s fans in a way that a glowing review that was focused on the forest rather than the trees probably wouldn’t.
There’s a podcast I listen to occasionally that once described Celtic Frost’s Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh as “The sort of thing you’d hear as part of some sort of performance art piece, where it’s played and images are projected onto white walls in an empty room.” I think you could say that about a lot of the music that bounces off of you; you describing this as “soundtrack music” kind of seems to hit a similar idea. This is the soundtrack to a particularly dystopian Industrial Revolution silent film.
I tend to see imagery with this stuff as well, especially when I'm listening casually, and completely agree that it would work great for art installations.
@@CriticalReactions I wonder if this is a case where a well made music video can complete a song. I know a lot of music videos are pretty paint by numbers, but the opportunity does exist.
@@VestigialLung Of course. I love well thought out music videos that feel more like multimedia projects than a simple visual addition to a primarily audio based artwork. I can't think of any off the top of my head but I know I've seen some music videos that elevate the song.
Films like stalker keep coming to mind when I listen to cult of luna
Love this song .. The self titled albun is there best work though
If you are willing to check a Cult of Luna album try Vertikal