Cult Of Luna & Julie Christmas – ‘Mariner’ [Review]
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For close to two decades, Cult Of Luna have laid claim to the throne of the post-metal kingdom, and few have disputed their right to the top spot. Whether carefully crafting five studio albums over the course of ten years, taking an extended creative break, or returning to the fray with 2013’s Vertikal and Vertikal II, Cult Of Luna have proven their worth over and over again.
For the past several years, Cult Of Luna albums have been thin on the ground. Begrudging them the desire to take things at their own pace is pretty silly considering how productive they’ve been in the past – sooner or later pretty much everyone needs to slow down a bit – and even the snarkiest Cult Of Luna critics are likely to find themselves involuntarily silenced by Mariner.
Mariner is not only as heavy as God’s balls, as you’d expect. Built around the central theme of space exploration, this five-track, near-hour-long epic is also intimidatingly vast. You’re looking at song lengths between eight and fifteen minutes apiece; face-frying intensity; and sprawling arrangements that place your ears in a cramped, massively pressurised capsule and send them on a voyage into the unknowable. Mariner somehow simultaneously explodes and implodes.
For all its focus on vacuums, isolation, and emptiness, Mariner is never soulless. Harsh, utterly uncompromising, annihilative, yes; devoid of humanity, never. This is largely thanks to the collaborative contributions of American vocalist Julie Christmas.
If you ever encounter the kind of dickhead who claims that women don’t belong in metal, steer him in Julie Christmas’s direction. Already established as a vocal powerhouse via former projects Made Out Of Babies and Battle Of Mice, Julie Christmas brings an insanely versatile voice to Mariner’s lift-off party. One minute she’s shredding your auditory cortex; the next, she’s bringing Björk to mind during a low-key section. Christmas’s influence intensifies an already winning sense of unpredictability, making Mariner so consistently immersive that it’ll be over before you know it.
If you’re a metal fan, at least. Your gran might not feel the same way, unless you have a really awesome gran.
Mariner is an album that gives you little choice but to listen to it as an album. It also rewards deep listening, especially on repeated listens. This is as much a journey as it is a long-player – and if Cult Of Luna need to take their time to produce music as brilliant as this, you’d be a fool to rush them.
TMMP RATING: 93%
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