Cult of Luna have released The Rift, the third song from In the Shadow of Your Shadow. The album is their tenth, runs seventy one minutes and arrives on 6 November through Red Creek, the label they own.
Seventy one minutes is the figure that matters. This is a band from Umea who have spent twenty seven years making records that take their time, and a double album length release this late in a career is a decision rather than an accident. They produced it themselves, Daniel Berglund recorded it, Magnus Lindberg mixed it and Ted Jensen mastered it, which is the same small circle that has handled most of their catalogue.
The band told Chaoszine that The Rift is the fastest song they have written. Johannes Persson put the lyric this way: it is about the loneliness of the human experience and the urgent need to belong, and in an echo chamber every idea comes back louder.
Elsewhere on the record Joe Duplantier of Gojira sings on Sadness Will Reign. Guest spots are rare here, and two of the album's songs carry them.
Three songs out and a month to go, then, for a record that will take longer to hear once than most albums take to listen to twice.