A long-planned collaboration lands ahead of In the Shadow of Your Shadow, with Johannes Persson explaining how the guests found their place.
Cult of Luna have released ‘Sadness Will Reign’, featuring Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier, ahead of their new album In the Shadow of Your Shadow this Friday, 6 November.
The Swedish band’s latest single brings a long-standing friendship into the studio. Speaking to Rocking.gr in an interview published on 2 November, guitarist and vocalist Johannes Persson said he and Duplantier had wanted to work together for years. This song gave them the opening.
Persson explained the choice in Mattia Schiavone’s interview, published by SpazioRock in Italian on 1 November. The band felt the track would suit his friend’s distinctive voice. He described its writing as direct, with a clearly defined chorus-like section.
At four minutes and 47 seconds, it’s a relatively compact invitation into an album whose ‘Breach’, ‘One More Day’ and ‘Burial’ each stretch beyond 11 minutes.
Duplantier was given suggested places for his vocals, with room to take them elsewhere. As Persson put it in Rocking.gr’s published interview: “If you get a feeling for something, follow it.”
That invitation also went to David Eugene Edwards, who appears on ‘One More Day’. A fan of the singer’s work with 16 Horsepower for around 25 years, Persson told SpazioRock he explained the song’s theme and left Edwards freedom over lyrics and vocal parts. Edwards came back singing in sections Persson hadn’t expected. Even after decades in a band, there’s room to be the fan wondering what a favourite musician will send back.
Making Room For Another Voice
Cult of Luna have made space for another voice on a much larger scale before: 2016’s Mariner was a full collaborative album with Julie Christmas. Here, two guests join a record that also demanded an unusual amount of work on Persson’s own delivery.
He told Rocking.gr that recording at his studio in Umeå let him repeatedly revisit vocals without the fixed deadline of an away-from-home session. By his account, he had never spent so long recording them.
The nine-track In the Shadow of Your Shadow was co-produced with Daniel Berglund and mixed by Magnus Lindberg. Lindberg also engineered and mixed Sydney band We Lost The Sea’s 2010 debut, Crimea.
Listen to ‘Sadness Will Reign’ featuring Joe Duplantier on Cult of Luna’s official Bandcamp page.
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