SALVATION

CoL's third album shows little or no development from the previous albums. If anything, we could see an inclusion of more Isis-styled post-rock doodling and an occasional spacey texture left and right.

The main problems with CoL are a lack of true creativity, personality and generally weak songwriting skills. Mostly this music is repetitive without being entrancing, a deadly combination making everything dreary and monotonous. There are some dynamics but they are the fairly predictable quiet>rise>outburst dynamics of post-rock, don't expect the imaginative variation of progressive rock. What bugs me the most is that every song sounds like an exact copy of any other one, both where it concerns the slowly trudging rhythm, the sounds used, the not really memorable riffs, the uninspiring aggression, the hard-core shouts and the inadequate but luckily sparse singing.

Most of the tracks bring formulaic Neurosis-styled sludge with unremarkable riffs and exhausting screaming. But on a rare occasion, this band shows what they are capable of. Waiting For You is a great example of how good this type of music can be if they really put their heart in it. It follows the typical pattern, starting with minutes of repeated clean guitar picking, building a dreamy atmosphere that gets violently ruptured by a phenomenal outburst of paranoid noise and chilling heaviness. For once it works. That's what I want to hear, not the cliché riffing and overstated 'pain & suffering' posture of the next track Adrift.

Cult Of Luna have got some talent but are too concerned with conforming to the rules of the genre to be able to do something really creative and exciting. I wouldn't recommend this album unless you're a fan of the genre, in which case it will be a safe bet. 2.5 stars.