Cult Of Luna has recently been in the studio recording a new album, which will be their first since their highly-regarded Mariner collaboration with Julie Christmas in 2016. As the band works on the new material, they've taken the time to celebrate the 20th birthday of their 1999 debut two-song demo. Here's the story of the demo, as told by founding guitarist and vocalist Johannes Persson.
"Today holds a special significance for Cult of Luna. On January 6th 1999, we came out of the Second home studio with our first demo.
In the spring of 1998 the band Eclipse had gone through some major musical and member changes. I can’t recollect in detail what happened but all of a sudden it was only myself, fellow guitarist Fredrik Renström and our new vocalist Claes Rydberg left in the band.
I was a kid with a lot on my mind that I needed to vent and all I knew was that I wanted to do something loud and massive. I continued writing and started to look for a new drummer. My memory fails me again because I don’t remember exactly how I found Magnus but I guess I must have seen online that he was a drummer and funny enough, we needed one. He’s from the neighboring city of Skellefteå so our initial contact was through email, that much I remember.
We decided that he would come to Umeå and try out some songs. I have a clear memory of picking up this seventeen-year-old version of Magnus at the Umeå bus station in July of ’98, carrying only two drumsticks.
Not much happened after the initial practice but we kept in touch. He called me one day and said that he knew a guitarist in the Skellefteå hardcore scene that probably could play bass. That’s how we met Erik.
At that point we started to go back and forth between Umeå and Skellefteå (a 1,5 hour buss ride) to finish the two songs that we planned to record in January. The plan was to track 18 min of music in one day and spend one day mixing. A time optimistic tradition we’ve kept going since then. We hardly knew each other and didn’t really have a band name. But we knew we had strayed too far off from what Eclipse was to keep that name.The demo was the start of something more than a band with the name we still hold to this day. It was the first step on the journey that made of these people more like family than friends."
Johannes Persson
