There’s no limit to Cult of Luna’s creative vision. Inspired by artists from hardcore, sludge metal, folk, art-rock and beyond, the Swedish luminaries are revered as one of the heaviest and most restless bands in alternative music. In the Shadow of Your Shadow is another bold leap into the black: possibly the darkest release to bear their name, yet full of ideas that show they’re still peerless 25 years since debuting.

“Stagnation is the only thing that scares me,” states singer/guitarist/co-founder Johannes Persson. “I’ve said this in every interview I’ve done for the past 25 years: I don’t care whether or not people think we’re repeating ourselves. As long as we feel like we aren’t, we will continue to do this.”

This new, 10th studio album is a 71-minute monolith: a stark rejection of trends, convention and pandering to one’s audience. Lyrically, it channels recent experiences of loss into a bleak set of songs. The title track and lead single is about feelings thought to be long buried, returning after something painful occurs. It takes the perspective of this anguish and characterizes it as a parasite: “His body is weak, the cracks will fit me. A disfigured form, I will complete it.”

Follow-up ‘Sadness Will Reign’ is a blunt, misanthropic statement, declaring, “All of you are born from filth!” Screams from Joe Duplantier, frontman of Grammy-winning extreme metal titans Gojira, hammer home the track’s fury. But, for all the ferocity on show, the band also broaden their own horizons. ‘One More Day’ – a song about the emotional struggle of depression, getting through life one day at a time – drops to a Fields of the Nephilim-like crawl, emphasising the baritone of 16 Horsepower leader and American folk icon David Eugene Edwards.

“David has been a huge influence for years,” says Persson. “I’ve been a huge fan of 16 Horsepower, his solo projects and Wovenhand for decades. ‘One More Day’ is one of my favorite tracks on the album. His voice fits perfectly on the song and it carries the subject matter with conviction.”

The album concludes with the cataclysmic ‘Burial’, the ending of which stacks some of Cult of Luna’s finest, hardest riffs into a truly towering achievement. A near-12-minute contemplation on mortality, it was inspired by the arc of life and death and how it’s perceived differently by people from different walks of life.

“I’ve always had a non-dramatic relationship with death,” explains Persson. “I think it’s because I grew up in a religious environment where death was not considered the end. Even though I’m an atheist and believe that what happens after you die is the same as what happened before you were born, the subject of the end, and how it makes people want to throw themselves into the vast nothingness, has always fascinated me.”

Co-produced by Daniel Berglund and mixed by Magnus Lindberg, In the Shadow of Your Shadow is another evolutionary effort from a band who refuse to stand still. It’s devastating and diverse, and it cements their place as trailblazers.

– Matt Mills, June 2026

Tracklist:
01. In the Shadow of Your Shadow
02. Sadness Will Reign (feat. Joe Duplantier)
03. Landby
04. Breach
05. The Rift
06. A Way Back
07. One More Day (feat. David Eugene Edwards)
08. From Grey to Black
09. Burial

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CULT OF LUNA "The Long Road North" 2xLP

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CULT OF LUNA "In The Shadow Of Your Shadow" 2xLP