“I never puffed it out,” Ian Astbury says early on, referring to his hair. Not a metaphor. He’s just getting that one straight before we go any further—The Cult were never a hair metal band, even if some late-‘80s labels and lazy journalists tried to shove them onto that Aqua Net compilation CD.
“I actually shaved mine in ’94. Billy [Duffy] did it before me. That was cathartic. Like, we don’t associate with this at all.”
It’s not bitterness. It’s clarity. After four decades of The Cult's fluid evolution, Astbury’s not wasting time on nostalgia. Even though his band is currently touring behind Under the Midnight Sun, an album haunted by ghosts of all kinds—musical, spiritual, environmental—he’s not interested in reliving 1989. Or 1984. Or whatever year you decided he mattered most. “The Ghost of Our Lives,” he says, referencing a line from “A Cut Inside,” “that’s nostalgia. That’s what other people want to project on you. That’s not how I live.”
And anyway, Astbury’s busy whispering apocalypse warnings over Moroccan rugs and guitar drones. Under the Midnight Sun opens with the line “Forget what you know,” and by the time he’s invoking Burroughs, Brian Jones, pirate radio, and ecological collapse, it becomes clear that The Cult have swerved out of any scene and into a labyrinth of their own design.
He talks about singing like other people talk about religion. “Sinatra, Elvis, Scott Walker, Serge Gainsbourg, Jim Morrison—they were all crooners,” he says. “There’s space in that. There’s room to breathe.” Astbury didn’t have formal vocal training unless you count being ten years old in a school choir, but he did have a household where Johnny Mathis and Paul Robeson were always playing. Later, there was Peter Gabriel, then Bowie. “I sang into records,” he shrugs. “That’s where it came from.”
Still, the contrast was never lost on him. “A crooner over abrasive rock shouldn’t work,” he says. “But it does. Because we let it.”
On Under the Midnight Sun, that croon becomes a vessel for meditation, fury, transcendence. “Vendetta X,” “Butterfly Hearts,” and “Give Me Mercy” all spiral from a place he describes as intentionally stripped of “histrionics.” It’s not passive. It’s surgical. “Try and keep the hysteria out of it,” he says, “that’s how you find the truth.”
The truth, it turns out, includes GPS coordinates embedded in the album’s artwork, eco-alarms buried in lyrics, and nods to everything from Saharan drone music to Ramellzee’s “Gothic futurism.” If this sounds overwhelming, that’s the point. “There’s an intention with everything,” Astbury says. “Every word, every nuance. If people don’t get it, they just leave it over there. Like, we don’t know what to do with this, so let’s ignore it.”
Spoiler: they are not ignoring it. Under the Midnight Sun has been one of The Cult’s most enthusiastically received records in years, and the current tour—billed pointedly as A Sonic Temple, not The Sonic Temple—is selling out iconic venues like the Greek and Hammersmith Apollo.
“It's not a show, it’s a ritual space,” he insists. “If you want to scream, scream. Say what you need to say. Let it out. Everyone’s safe here.”
But don’t confuse that for kumbaya. This is still the man who once rehearsed above a reggae shop in Bradford, played with Bauhaus, opened for The Clash, and cut hip-hop-infused drum loops in Matt Dike’s studio surrounded by Basquiat paintings. He namechecks Ethel Cain, Yves Tumor, and Rammstein in the same breath as Brian Jones and the Velvet Underground. “We’re dining at their table,” he says, “the table Picasso and Warhol built.”
So where does that leave the Cult in 2022? Somehow still between the cracks. And proud of it. “We’re not better than anyone,” Astbury says. “But we’re not less than either.”
And if you need him, he’ll be on a Moroccan rug, whispering the end of the world into a dark wave microphone while playing a Sonic Temple near you.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
