Review by Daniel for Cult of Luna - The Long Road North (2022)

Yet another stunning highlight from a band that is now the clear leader of the post-sludge metal movement, “The Long Road Home" is an album that creeps up on you slowly, gradually attaching itself to your heart-strings & ever so gently increasing the tension until Cult of Luna have you strung up so tight that you feel you'll likely burst at any moment. The album starts off in fairly predictable fashion & (as Sonny spoke of in his review) you're very unlikely to be surprised by what you receive with a new Cult of Luna record however I simply cannot deny that the class & sophistication that this band possesses places them up above their peers when I experience the stunning attention to detail & compositional complexity they invariably produce.

Things only start to really get going with the glorious atmospherics of earie third track "Beyond I" but they rarely subside from that point onwards. As usual with me, it's the least popular tracks that I rate the highest with short post-rock piece "Full Moon" & closing ambient number "Beyond II" stealing the show from wonderful post-sludge epics like "An Offering to the Wild" or "Blood Upon Stone". "The Long Road Home" is perfectly suited to it's title as it's a lengthy record at 69 minutes but will continue to open up with each listen, offering increasingly greater rewards for the active listener's investment. "Somewhere Along The Highway" may still be Cult of Luna's crowning achievement however "The Long Road Home" isn't all that far behind their best work & I'd even go so far as to say that it has a slight advantage over their classic 2004 third album "Salvation" for me these days. Essential listening for post-metal fans.