The Cult Band Release New Album “Under The Midnight Sun”
The Cult Band – On the sidelines of the band’s new tour after two years, The Cult frontman, Ian Astbury, talks about how he started traveling at a very young age after joining The Cult. Especially after he met guitarist Billy Duffy and joined the band formation.
Ian Astbury also talked about how he met legendary producer Rick Rubin and the hip-hop scene around Beastie Boys, which Rubin produced. He also shared stories about the band’s opening for David Bowie and Iggy Pop.
From that circle, it’s no surprise that Ian Astbury has been surrounded by music legends and popular culture icons throughout his career. He also spoke about Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone and renowned psychologist Timothy Leary.
In that lengthy conversation with SPIN, Ian Astbury also explained how he almost played Jim Morrison and how he performed with Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek of The Doors and touched on new bands like post-punk IDLES. And, of course, the singer revealed some of what we can expect from her upcoming album and talked about how it was inspired by Rolling Stone’s late Brian Jones.
This SPIN interview with The Cult Band frontman took place after the band officially announced their new album, Under The Midnight Sun, which is ready to be released on October 7, 2022. The album was produced by Tom Dalgety (Pixies, Ghost, Royal Blood) and came out via Black Hill Records.
The Cult Band did not forget to share the first single for the new album entitled Give Me Mercy. The single explains that the founding members of The Cult, Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, have spent the six years since their last LP and pushed further into their esoteric power. Flanked by dynamic guitarist riffs, Ian Astbury reaches a new level of vulnerability.
Ian Astbury comments, “I was absolutely captivated by this piece of music that Billy wrote, and it fits perfectly into my thinking about the need for our culture to move beyond the assumption of duality. We need a new language because words cannot express our purpose.”
When the sun wouldn’t leave the sky one night in Finland, Ian Astbury noticed. Walking the grounds of the Provinssirock festival, Astbury finds himself enjoying the surreal, almost magical moment that comes with the “midnight sun,” as opposed to the summer sun not descending north of the Arctic Circle.
“It’s three in the morning, the sun is up, and there are all beautiful people in this quiet moment. People lying on the grass, making out, drinking, and smoking. Rows of flowers lined up in front of the stage from this afternoon’s performance. It was a great moment,” recalled Ian Astbury.
While reviewing archive footage of the show, Ian Astbury discovered a new mysticism at the time and incorporated it into the upcoming Under the Midnight Sun.
By 2020, The Cult has been through a cycle of album releases, tours, and recordings. As the world closes, everyone is forced to re-prioritize the way they approach life and work. “When the world stops, I have this moment to write in real-time, to count,” Astbury said.
When the lockdown was lifted and the group could meet to record, they teamed up with Dalgety. “I was forced by this vision, this anomaly, this memory, to be under the midnight sun. Tom is helping us bring new forms and frequencies of music into our process,” continued Astbury.
Lyrically, the album Under the Midnight Sun supports the new musical agility by building on the beautiful and surreal vision of the title. Throughout, Ian Astbury draws influences from Brian Jones, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Buddhism, Beats, and Age of Aquarius, all imbued with contemporary threats and The Cult’s timeless color palette.
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As The Cult Band is now back playing live and sharing the album Under the Midnight Sun, Ian Astbury hopes the record connects to something deep within and unconscious of their listeners—something Astbury discovered in him.
“At the heart of it all, the music contains the vibrational frequencies we used to communicate before we could even speak. Birdsong, animal calls, string theory, quantum physics, psychedelic. The footage is ultimately about finding and bringing together beauty in those strange natural moments.”
The Cult Band is an English rock band formed in 1983 in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Prior to establishing its name in 1984, the band performed under the name Death Cult, which was an evolution of lead singer Ian Astbury’s previous band name, Southern Death Cult. They gained a dedicated following in England in the mid-1980s as a post-punk/gothic rock band, with singles such as She Sells Sanctuary, before breaking into the mainstream in the United States in the late 1980s—a hard rock band with singles like Love Removal. Machines.
Since its inception in 1983, the band has had a variety of line-ups; the longest-serving members were Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, both of whom wrote the band’s songs. They have scored 10 albums such as Dreamtime (1984), Love (1985), Electric (1987), Sonic Temple (1989), Ceremony (1991), The Cult (1994), Beyond Good and Evil (2001), Born into This ( 2007), Choice of Weapon (2012), Hidden City (2016), and the next one is Under the Midnight Sun (2022).
