Review by Sonny for Cult of Luna / Julie Christmas - Mariner (2016)

I have no idea who Juie Christmas is, or what her work outside of this collaboration may sound like, but one thing is for sure, she has certainly brought an additional dimension to CoL's sound, without nudging it too far from what we have come to expect from the swedish atmo-sludge crew. I went into Mariner expecting it to be Cult of Luna with ethereal female vocals, presuming Julie Christmas to have come from a darkwave or gothic background similar to Chelsea Wolfe, but that isn't what she brings to the table at all. In fact, there is a quite a variation in her vocal styles, ranging from a quite twee-sounding, young girl-like voice to a snarling, sharp-edged sludgy shriek. I must admit that it is the more aggressive latter style which I found most appealing, such as she uses on "The Wreck of S.S. Needle" alongside a clean style that reminded me of SubRosa's Rebecca Vernon. I can see that Julie's vocals may be divisive among CoL fans and I feel that it may take me a few more listens to be completely at home with them myself, but she does help to revitalise a band that was getting maybe a little too comfortable in it's own skin.

Of course, this being Cult of Luna, the instrumentation is impeccable and the songs are multi-textured affairs, but they feel less reliant on the build-and-release trope that has become the main feature of atmospheric sludge in general and CoL in particular over the years. I think this may be down to the flexibility of Julie Christmas's vocals which bring wider textural variety to the vocal aspect of Mariner's sound and makes it less reliant on the building of instrumental tension and the subsequent payoff of it's release that the genre has stereotypically come to rely on. This fundamental aspect of Cult of Luna's sound isn't completely absent of course and is very much still in evidence in a song like "Approaching Transition" which, tellingly, Julie is less involved in and as such sounds more like the CoL we are all used to.

Whilst the album as a whole is a very solid and interesting affair, for me it is at it's best when JC is given free rein and utilises all the vocal tricks in her toolbox, with the closer "Cygnus" and the afrementioned, "The Wreck of S.S. Needle", being the two standouts as her vocals weave in and around the band's searing and soaring instrumentation in a quite sublime dance of musical dexterity and creativity. The songwriting on these two tracks is quite exceptional and feels extremely natural, as if the sounds these two entities have ended up producing are the only feasible outcome of their inevitable collaboration.

I must admit, before listening to Mariner, I thought that Cult of Luna no longer really had the ability to surprise me. Entertain and delight me, for sure, but to make me do a double-take and really sit up and take notice of a newly-heard release, no those days were gone. I was wrong for sure and I can't really explain why it has taken me so long to get around to checking this collaboration out, other than I already thought I knew what to expect. Well bigger fool me, because this is not at all that thing, but rather an invigorating and special slab of atmospheric sludge that stands up to scrutiny against all but the absolute best that the genre has to offer. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks after all.