Cult of Luna’s tenth studio album, In the Shadow of Your Shadow, came out November 6 through RED CRK. Joe Duplantier appears on “Sadness Will Reign”, the song the Swedish band released two days before the album. The other billed guest is David Eugene Edwards on “One More Day”. Their two tracks are separated by four songs, and they offer different ways into a record that runs just over 71 minutes.

Members of Cult of Luna pose together in a dark studio.
Cult of Luna in a publicity photograph by Chad Michael Ward.

Duplantier’s track comes second, after the title song, and lasts 4:47. Edwards appears at track seven, on a piece that runs 11:48. Play from the beginning and his track starts at roughly the 41-minute mark, using the published timings. The two guest tracks add up to 16:35 out of 71:24. The longer of the two leaves space for a guest to enter at a point when the album has already spent much of its running time with the band.

Mariner offers a useful contrast. Cult of Luna made that 2016 record with Julie Christmas, who shared the artist billing across the album. Here the two featured names are attached to individual songs. A listener following the Gojira connection can go straight to the second track. Someone curious about how Cult of Luna work with another voice over a full record has a different starting point in Mariner.

The track list also shows where the new album puts its weight away from the guest appearances. “Landby” lasts 2:43, then “Breach” takes 12:15. The closing “Burial” runs 11:50, a couple of seconds longer than “One More Day”. There are three tracks over eleven minutes. One has a billed guest. That is a better guide to the album’s pace than the running time of the final single alone.

Daniel Berglund co-produced the record and Magnus Lindberg mixed it. The band offers a CD digibook and multiple double LP versions. The black vinyl and the marbled editions listed by the band carry the same nine songs in the same order. The things to check when choosing a pressing are the colour, packaging and edition size. The printed track lists give no extra music to one of those vinyl options.

Cult of Luna’s European dates start at Les Docks in Lausanne on February 26, 2027, with London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town on March 6 and Prague’s Archa+ on March 13. The recording credits establish where the guest voices can be heard today. The tour listings establish where the band will play, with no appearance by either album guest announced on those listings.