Interview with Cult of Luna's guitarist Johanne's - the 1st European tour, re-release of 'Cult Of Luna' ..and .. er ..vegan cooking
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One of the most exciting bands to emerge in years, Swedish slo-mo crushcore merchants Cult Of Luna have had a busy year. After releasing their second album, the magnificent ‘The Beyond’ and playing numerous well-received live shows, the band are back in the UK soon for a tour with ultra-hip metalcore mob Poison The Well, not to mention the arrival of a new video for ‘The Watchtower’ and the re-releasing of the band’s eponymous debut album. We spoke to guitarist Johannes Persson about the past, present and future of Cult Of Luna. Oh, and vegan cookery.
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How has 2003 been for you so far?
JOHANNES: “To be honest, it’s been kind of slow. We got a load of great reviews for ‘The Beyond’ and we’ve played a few great shows but we had a lot of trouble with or booking agent so we didn’t do as many shows as we thought we would. Hopefully that is all going to change now. We’re already thinking about the next album, so we need to go out and promote ‘The Beyond’ as much as we can for the rest of the year. I’m surprised that ‘The Beyond' has sold as much as it has. It hasn’t sold a lot, because it’s a pretty extreme record, but as far as we’re concerned it’s been selling very well. We haven’t done a lot of touring and the video has only just come out.” |
Tell me about the video for ‘The Watchtower’
JOHANNES: “It’s a good looking video. I have no problem with it, and I’m supposed to sell it, of course, but it’s not exactly what we’re all about. It would be a great video for another band. The biggest problem is that we don’t have a million pounds to do a video. That's a problem, but I must say that Pete has done a great video with the budget he had. It’s worth five times the money we spent on it. I watched Tool’s ‘Parabola’ video yesterday and that’s the thing we really want to do, you know? But it’s still a really good video. The people that have helped us with it have been really helpful. The actors have done a really good job, and the people who lent us the apartment, and the cameraman and the director. They’ve all done a great job. We’re not a big band. Earache is not an enormous record label, so considering the money we had to spend on it, it’s a great video. |
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Would you be interested in making a Cult Of Luna DVD?
JOHANNES: “That would be really cool to do, but the problem is that we could do that for the next album but we’d have to do 70 minutes worth of film. We make long albums! I do plan to learn how to make videos myself, learn about all the editing equipment. I really want to do a video for ‘Clones’ even if it’s just for myself! It would be good to make a music video or a short film. When I listen to the first album, it would be very cool to make something for ‘Dark Side Of The Sun’ the instrumental track. It’s more aggressive than ‘Clones’ so I have a few ideas of what I want to do. I have a friend who is a circus artist, so we could use a lot of fire and stuff. It would be great if he could do some kind of performance for that song. I’m sure he could do something cool with it.”
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Does it feel strange to be re-releasing your first album?
JOHANNES: “It feels like we only finished recording it yesterday. It’s so fresh in our minds and things have happened so quickly. But we’re all very proud of that album.”
What do you remember about recording ‘Cult Of Luna’?
JOHANNES: “I remember it was a horrible time, the worst ever, in the studio. We were there for so long and we had to sleep on the floor for many nights. But although there are a few things about the album that I’d change, it’s still a good record for our first album. We didn’t really expect to get as many good reactions as we did. I suppose we must be doing something right, but we didn’t think the first album was a classic when we recorded it!”
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You’re going out on tour with Poison The Well later this month. How do you feel about that?
JOHANNES: “I’m sure it will be a good tour, but one thing that really sucks when you open up for another band is that you don’t get the time that you need to do a decent show. Right now, if we play on our own we will play for one and half hours, but supporting another band we will get no more than 45 minutes. Right now whenever we play I am longing to play this new song we’ve written. It’s like a mantra, a religious thing for me. I hope we’ll have the opportunity to play it on this tour, and I think we will have to play a song from the first album, too. We will probably play a song that we haven’t played since we recorded the first album. It will be interesting to see if we can actually still play it! We will probably fuck it up. I’m not saying which song it is, because I don’t know if we’ll definitely play it or not.”
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How do you think the fans will respond to the new material?
JOHANNES: “A lot of people have really, really got into the new song, but we had an entry in our guestbook yesterday that said that the person had seen Cult Of Luna twice before and really liked it, but that now there was too much of “that weirdo Isis stuff and not enough of that Breach stuff”. The new song is like six minutes of slow, mellow things and then six minutes of fucking mayhem! So I don’t know where that comes from. And that’s not even one of the most extreme things we’re working on right now. You never know, we might end up getting just one K in Kerrang! for our next album. That would be cool, though! But, of course, we might get away with it. The usual metal fan might really hate us, but they already hate us anyway”
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As a vegan, how do you survive when you’re on tour?
JOHANNES: "Two words. Potato chips! No, it’s really no problem, it’s just that those gas stations don’t really have anything for me apart from potato chips and soft drinks. I’ve toured Europe two or three times now and it’s OK, but the service stations in the UK are totally worthless. Maybe you can buy an apple or something, for two pounds! We have named the new tour the ‘Health Tour’. We will work out as much as possible, doing push-ups and running as much as possible. We will lose some weight, I think, so I don’t need to eat anything.”
Are you a good cook?
JOHANNES: “When I try! I’ve been cooking for a long time. I became vegan when I was sixteen, so I had to learn pretty quickly. It’s been almost ten years now.”
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So what's your speciality?
JOHANNES: “I have none! I do a pretty good pasta sauce, but you need some special ingredients. I use a lot of olive oil and some garlic and stuff like that. I did a really good chilli yesterday, actually. I don’t know what the spices are called in English. I used some strange spice, chilli beans and tomato sauce. And I use this soy meat stuff. It’s a good meal, at least.
I bet eating chilli goes down a treat on a crowded tour bus?
JOHANNES; “It all adds to the fun! When you’re on tour, very often the food is like overcooked spaghetti. It always sucks and people never think. I don’t know what’s wrong with people’s heads, making some strange stew that no one likes. They must know that we have to eat this stuff for several weeks, with no spices or anything else. Generally the food we eat on tour is alright, I guess.”
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Finally, what are the band’s plans for the future?
JOHANNES: ‘It's so hard to say. Our ambition has been what it’s always been. It’s a cliché, but we just want to write good music! Our ambition isn’t just to maintain the same genre or actually being in just one genre. We don’t think like that at all. It’s never been our thinking to be like that, doing one kind of music. Our ambition is to make music, evolving the art form and moving forward. It’s important to see it like that. You don’t have to play prog rock, you can play stoner rock or whatever, but just don’t stagnate and stay the same. We want to evolve in the thematical sense and do something that feels honest. I know that when we’re doing some of these things there’s a risk that we'll lose some people along the way for being too extreme, but hey, that's the price we have to pay.” |
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