Album Review: Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas – Mariner (Indie Recordings)

Cult of Luna are a metal band like no other. They create dark & immersive music that combines heaviness with soft melody. They are like no other within the scene & every album release is met with huge excitement.

They rarely fail to deliver & that’s no different in Mariner. The one big difference here though is the inclusion of Julie Christmas (Made Out of Babies/Battle of Mice). Her vocals lift what is already a stunning album to heights unheard of.

5 tracks long but coming in at 54 minutes, this is an incredible journey that is nothing short of mind-blowing. The technicalities of the music makes this something you’ll just keep coming back to hear again & again finding more that you missed the first time around.

With music like this it would be easy for it to slip into a pattern & get boring but each song has enough intricacies & changes to ensure that never happens. Julie Christmas is used in such a way that she enhances every moment she sings on, never being over-used.

The Wreck of S.S. Needle in particular stands out, an incredible showcase of dark & brooding heaviness mixed with Christmas’s desperate sounding vocal range. It really is a sound to behold.

It’s not an album that you can just have as background noise, it’s an album that requires every second of your attention. Give it, you won’t regret it.

Full Track Listing:

1. A Greater Call
2. Chevron
3. The Wreck of S.S. Needle
4. Approaching Transition
5. Cygnus