The Raging River

“One thing that motivates me is constantly keeping momentum,” Cult of Luna vocalist and guitarist Johannes Persson tells Apple Music. “It doesn’t have to be forward, we just need to move all the time. As long as we’re intending to keep it fresh and do something new, I’ll keep doing it.” The Swedish metal band’s 2019 album, A Dawn to Fear, was a career high point: The band had assembled at a small studio off the Norwegian coast to record their eighth album, an 80-minute, eight-song triumph. But the writing process itself spawned what Persson describes as “some kind of creative explosion” that remained with the band long after the album was done. “Sometimes you feel like songs haven't lived up to their full potential just yet,” he says of the music left on the cutting room floor. “When you start to see an album form, it comes down to dynamics, and some of the songs might not fit. But they had potential.” The five songs on The Raging River were written during and after the album recording sessions, but the EP would have likely never happened had the pandemic not halted their 2020 plans. “We were able to go back and rework the songs with the extra time we had,” Persson says. “We weren’t ready to start writing an album, and we had no idea what was going to happen through the fall or the winter. So we just got some studio time and got on with it.” Below, Persson speaks more about each track on the band's enrapturing EP. Three Bridges “It was written really, really fast. We felt like we needed something a little heavier, a little faster maybe. I went home, spent a couple of days writing the skeleton of the song. I think we spent two or three practice sessions on it, and then we went to the studio. You never know what's going to come out in the studio, if the songs are going to work or not. On this recording, we didn't have an option. With every record we put out, it often feels like we're taking a chance when you write for your own sake. To be honest, if you've gotten us