Cult of Luna

Sunday June 22nd (Hellfest 2008 3rd day)

Swedish post metal band, Cult of Luna has released last year their fifth album, Eternal Kingdom (Earache). On March 29th 2009, they will release a live dvd “Fire was born” including live shot from their 2008 tour. They are currently touring in Europe, so be sure to catch them if they’re to play near you, for a Cult of Luna’s show is a unique experience.

Fab: So are you happy to be here at the HELLFEST ?
Johannes: Yes, we are hopefully. We’ve been doing a couple of French festivals, and they were badly organized, so we were really hoping, we prayed that, finally we gonna play in a (good) festival, and everything has turned on perfect this time. And every band that plays here, they are good in metal or hardcore.

Fab: The last time in Paris, I read in one of your interview that you were a little tired of touring, so, are you doing better?(laughter).
Johannes: Yes, I haven’t toured for a year now. We’re just been doing like this one off-show, you know, festivals and also a couple of gigs, in Germany. But you know, we don’t tour that much compare to other bands, but still…

Fab: It’s very demanding.
Johannes: Yeah, it is, and it takes…when you do it too much, it can takes the edge off the fun. But right now, I’m enjoying it.

Fab: Musically, are you going more to the research of emotion & greatness, that typical “in your face” metal?
Johannes: Maybe. I have really hard time answering those questions because, for us, we just write music.

Fab: and you don’t analyze…
Johannes: No, no. Exactly, you’re right on spot, I mean, that kind of analysis, I think, we leave it to journalists and fans. Because I think they see it clearer than we do. We’re seeing it from our perspective, for us it’s just writing stuff. And other people came, maybe like, get behind it, and see evolution and stuff like that.

Fab: Yeah, but I mean, sometimes you can say “our last record was really heavy and maybe I would like to make a softer one”…
Johannes: Actually that was a real conscious decision, on our part. We want to do heavier album actually, i am not sure that we succeed in that, but that was our intention, and it was quite hard you know, to do work like that. We’re sort of writing songs and think they won’t work at all, we threw everything away and we rewrote everything and finally I’m really please with how the album has turned out again, but it was quite hard. One example, we went into the studio, on Sunday I think, and the Friday before that, two days before we went into the studio, we wrote two new songs (laughter).

Fab: Could you tell us a little bit about your rather strange recording process, for “somewhere along the highway”?
Johannes: Yeah. That was a bit different then, on this new album because we had been in the Tonteknik studios for three albums, and we found like “ok”…we went out, we took all the recording equipment and went out to a, like a small wooden house outside, like an hour from our hometown, in the middle of nowhere (laughter). And we just record it, it was really an interesting process because it was a more chill-out, euh…

Fab: It was easier to focus only on the music?
Johannes: Yeah, in one way it was. It’s hard to explain how it felt, it was more a chill-out environment. It’s like sitting out on the porch, “should we record now? Ok”…And then we just go inside.

Fab: Will you do it again for the future? Or was it just an experiment.
Johannes: You’ll never know.

Fab: You said that a lot of Nordic bands are exaggerating when they say that their music is depressing and sad because of the harsh winters and conditions. Could you tell us more about this?
Johannes: I don’t know how much you should actually…it holds off of different reasons why they sounds like they do. I think this question is a bit like the other one, it’s hard for me to explain because I grew up there and I don’t know what kind of impact it had. I think, for me personally, it was more of a cultural environment and it was much more important than actual frisk environment. I grew up in a very vibrating scene in the beginning of the nineties and the hardcore punk scene then was very open-minded, and people helped each other out, and that kind of environment really pushed everyone to do better. Because everyone started off in hardcore bands, and then it spread out throughout the musical spectrum, and CULT OF LUNA is one of the heavier band that’s still around. All the musicians turned out better and better, and played in different bands and different acts and broadening the musical perspective. For us for example, on 8 people, 4 people come from the hardcore background, 4 people have had nothing to do with heavy music at all. It’s a big advantage for us, because they’re taking in, something like, you know, things that I don’t think about, or come up with ideas I would never thought of. Because they’re not from that scene, they don’t know the “rules”.

Fab: Your state of mind when you think about the artistic directions of your videos? Always a little story movie within the song?
Johannes: We released three videos so far, I’m really happy with the two last ones. The first one was shit, the record company said we need to do a video, and they had a guy, quite good in what he did, but he didn’t understand what we were about. And six, seven years ago we were like “ok, we’ll do whatever you want”. But the last two ones, I’m really happy about. “Leave Me Here”, that was my concept, and the guys that did the video, POPCORE, are among the few companies that are still around that actually can make a good living out of musical videos. Check out their homepage (ndr: www.popcorefilm.com) .

They are literally the best guys in the world to do music videos. There’s so much creativity in what they do. It was actually shot with a still, still camera, very high resolution, whole video. They shot everything in sequence, five pictures per second. They got this four an a half minutes video out of six minutes material. Compare to our last video “The Watchtower”, I had two hours of material… That video is also very much connected to what the song is all about. And like you said, a lot of bands just do videos for the sake of it; We’re not going to do a video on this (new) album because we don’t get enough money to do a video…

Fab: That the song deserves, of high quality rather than just do a video because you have to.
Johannes: Yeah, exactly. So if the record company is not opening up its wallet more, it’s not gonna be anything. We don’t want to do a video just for the sake of it.

Fab: Concerning the set-list and the show for tonight, have you planned something special?
Johannes: No. It sucks doing festivals because you have like what, forty minutes? We usually play around one and a half hour, and (here) it’s not even a half of set, so we’re just going to do old and heavier stuff. I mean this is a metal festival, so we have to adapt ourselves.

Fab: Last question (because at that moment, the manager came to inform Johannes that AT THE GATES will be on stage shortly, and he definitely wants to see them) What would you make listen to someone who didn’t know CULT OF LUNA at all? Just one song.
Johannes: Well, I got this question a lot, personally a lot. It’s really hard. I’d say that we are a very heavy band, but you know, quite instrumental oriented and a lot of harmonies. There’re a lot of layers going around, guitars and keyboards… So i’d say some heavy stuff with a lot of instruments

Fab: A last message for the readers of BSPIX?
Johannes: Love France, I just love to get back here again, with our proper shows. Because sound always sucks in festivals…but we’ll see, we’ll do our best for sure.