Seminal hard rock band The Cult return this week with their ninth studio album, Choice of Weapon. It’s the band’s first full length record in over five years and promises to be one of their best—and we’re spending the week together to celebrate its debut.
In advance of our week with the band, during which we’ll get the low down on the new record, give you an chance to win said record, and an opportunity to catch the band live—on us—we caught up with eclectic frontman Ian Astbury to talk about their 1983 masterpiece Love, favorite songs to play live, and details surrounding the birth of the new record.
We’re also delighted to debut today the video for the new track, “Lucifer,” directed by ANONYMOUS CREW, a group of feral, young guerilla filmmakers who Ian solicited to make clips for Choice of Weapon.
Love is one of your best known and most iconic records. Did you have any idea how relevant and influential that record would come to be during the recording of it?
No. It was very spontaneous. It came together very easily; it was a very easy record to make. The songs kind of wrote themselves. It wasn’t as complicated a time, I guess when you’re coming up it’s very different. There were less obstacles in our lives. That’s one of the things that really enabled us to make that record.
Can you give me a quick comparison on how your life is today compared to earlier on in your career?
I can’t remember to be honest with you. I tend not to live in the rear view mirror, it’s kind of irrelevant to me. I’m very much a person who lives very much in the present moment.
I’m not really great at objectifying the past because it’s gone. I can talk about the time mechanics of it, but if you’re trying to explain somebody what it was like, you had to be there. It’s a very kind of a subjective experience if I could tell you anything and it wouldn’t really come over.
And is there a favorite song to play live?
My favorite song to play live, let me see. It’s interesting it kind of flips around. We get really excited to play the new songs. Recently we’ve been doing” Saints Are Down” from the Cult album from 1994 which I really like playing. It’s a really good song to perform live..
It’s seems like you guys really have a good time when you play “Electric Ocean.” It seems like a real energizing song to open the set?
“Electric Ocean” in that sense is very instantaneous and spontaneous. It’s a profound experience to walk on stage and perform. I’ve not known anything else, but again it’s trying to explain to somebody what’s it’s like to be a performer and go on stage. You just have to be there and walk through that threshold.
For me, there is a transcendent theme. I go from the production room, to this environment—to the stage, it’s definitely a visceral shift. The energy with the cognition falls away and that’s what happens in a sense. You want to talk about mechanics of it, it becomes really about being connected.
You teamed up with Bob Rock and Chris Goss for the new album.
Chris Goss is actually the architect for this record.
If I was a fly on the wall what would I hear in the studio?
Everything, You would hear everything from confessionals of dark adventures to ordering some food. The studio environment is a very sacred place and the studio has to be very safe. It’s a place where anything can happen and this idea of bringing cameras into the studio, well I’m opposed to that. You want to contain the energy in the room and you want to hold that spell. Once you break that spell it becomes common place.
So, you’re trying to create something that’s just pure as possible and not contaminated with the kind of pedestrian external situations. You really want to hold that spell in the studio. So, if you were a fly in the wall in the what studio you’d probably hear a broad spectrum of opinions. You’d also hear silence as well. During the times when we don’t have any sound at all, when it’s silent sometimes it’s when the best things get done.
Some of my most favorite moments in the studio are when it’s quiet. When you’re not thinking, when you’re not already communicating, when there’s no noise, some good stuff comes from that silence.
Where does the new album fall into The Cult’s wide range of sounds. Is it closer to Electric or more along the lines of Sonic Temple. Where would you put this record along with the rest of your catalog?
I wouldn’t. It’s its own animal. I think it’s a very western, very modern, western Sussex sound. You have to experience it for yourself as everyone is going to have a different perception of it. We are much more concerned about the experience at the time when you’re listening to the record. I know that it’s a very authentic, that’s the word that comes to mind for this record, it’s authentic.
The Cult’s brand new Choice of Weapon hits store shelves tomorrow, 5/22 on Cooking Vinyl.
