It’s definitively one of the most expected albums of the year. Ladies and gentlemen, The Cult are back! And they are back with some hard as a rock solid Rock. Kind of merging of two different eras of the band. One one hand we’ve got some real pounding classic Rock themes which lead us back to “Electric” (1987) and “Sonic Temple” (1989), on the other hand the album is filled with some dark, hypnotic tension which was characteristic for some of their more recent albums as “Beyond Good and Evil” (2001) and their previous “Born into This” (2007).
Bass player Chris Wyse describe it as a “Zep/Stooges mix of energy” – and the shadows of Iggy and Page are definitively hidden there.
The Cult returned in 2006, after a four-year hiatus, releasing their eighth studio album “Born into This” in 2007. Although “Born into This” sold well, The Cult were dropped from Roadrunner Records, and in July 2009, frontman Ian Astbury stated that The Cult would not make any more albums. Asked in September 2009 why The Cult would not make another album, Astbury replied, “It’s a dead format; we don’t have the attention span for albums. The idea of going into a studio and spending a year-and-a-half creating a body of work which you put out as a body of work is pointless. By the time you put it out, it’s already been leaked. It’s a year-and-a-half worth’s of work down the fucking tubes. We need to put out bite-sized chunks.”
Instead of a new albums, The Cult released two EPs, titled “Capsule 1” and “Capsule 2”, released in September and November 2010 respectively and the band toured to support them.
At the beginning of 2011 Astbury declared that The Cult would be recording a new album directly after the tour and that they would be working with Chris Goss (worked with Masters of Reality, Kyuss, Screaming Trees, Soulwax, Stone Temple Pilots, Queens of the Stone Age, etc).
On November 29, 2011, it was announced that the album would be co-produced by Bob Rock and the album will be released by Cooking Vinyl Records.
The album was written by veteran members Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, recorded in New York City, Los Angeles, the California high desert, and the band’s Witch Mountain studios in the Hollywood Hills between July and December 2011.
As they say, the album is aimed at the heart of The Cult’s loyal following. It reflects the current discontent and destruction of our eco systems, the search for individual meaning against a tide of rampant materialism, narcissism and disconnected lives. “We went deeper . . . we worked a bit harder on this record. We have great fans and they deserve our best,” added Duffy, “and I feel this is one of our best records, maybe the best.”
While “Lucifer” sounds almost like a classic Danzig track – while Danzig sounded like the classic The Cult 😆 – , “Life Death” might be an Iggy or a David Bowie song. This juxtaposition of dark and heavy elements gives to “Choice of Weapon” a special groove and intensity, an almost mystic vibe while heaviness remains the central driven force of the album.
“Post Rock”? Don’t know, I think Bob Rock is a too conservative producer to deliver something actually edge cutting and probably he’s role was to balance back to the more classic path the band and make out of this “Choice of Weapon” commercially the most. And probably he succeeded. This is not PiL , neighter Marilyn Manson … If that is good or bad, everybody have to decide for his self.
Tracklist:
(Disc 1)
01 – Honey from a Knife
02 – Elemental Light
03 – The Wolf
04 – Life Death
05 – For The Animals
06 – Amnesia
07 – Wilderness Now
08 – Lucifer
09 – A Pale Horse
10 – This Night In The City Forever
(Disc 2)
11 – Every Man And Woman Is A Star
12 – Embers
13 – Until The Light Takes Us
14 – Siberia
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTKLJUZcUFw&w=545&h=306]
