The Swedish band Cult of Luna rose to the stage just as the rocking festival nation had their first glimpse of sun light. When the eight-man funeral procession let out the first notes, the sunny weather went out the window.

The progressive cross-breed of hardcore and doom that is the result of two drum sets, three guitars, a bass, a synthesizer and trumpet coated with vocals rolled over the crowd like wave, at times drowning and sometimes uplifting. This kind of dynamic variation is a staple tool in almost every band’s arsenal, some just are better at using the tools they’ve got.

The drummers set the pace in Cult of Luna, and they succeeded in sharing the responsibility. While the other was banging furiously, the other might be playing tambourine standing up, both changing tempos as if they had telepathic connection. When both were blasting away at full speed, the audience sure felt it.

Especially the drummer on the left side of the stage, Thomas Hedlund, played occasionally with such intensity and feeling I have rarely seen. The guitar walls and bass lines were alternating between back-breaking heaviness and crisp descriptive sounds. The singer Klas Rydberg and singer-guitarist Fredrik Kihlberg’s delivery was, despite the dynamic background, brutal hardcore scream, which is not in any way a bad thing. The uniform vocal murdering tied everything very nicely together. Electronic sounds were used sparingly and with discretion, and the trumpet heard in the intro fit the whole rather well.

What made the gig interesting, in addition to the music itself, was that the actual vocalist took the wheel when a good time had passed since the beginning. The band notably suffered from technical problems (which was evident from all the technicians running around the stage), but that didn’t hurt the ambience, because it isn’t a big bother when one instrument falls silent in a band this big.

Text: Juha Aalto
Pic: Mikael Wänskä
Translation: Jari Rytkönen

Tämä artikkeli on julkaistu lauantaina 12. heinäkuuta 2008 kello 22.30 ja sen aiheena on In English.