Record #366: Cult of Luna – Salvation (2004)

As much as I love Isis, it’s amazing I haven’t come across Sweden’s Cult of Luna sooner… 
Any article about post metal mentions both of their names (and Neurosis, whose discography is a little more impenetrable). I may have come to their seminal record twelve years too late, but its punch isn’t diminished any.

Rather, Salvation displays a group with an unmistakable mastery of patient composition–maybe even more patient than Isis. While the songs are built on repetition and slow builds (read: post metal), they never languish in tepidness. Rather, they traffic between ambient lows and punishing (midtempo) highs with a cold calculation.