RIWEN, A new Cult of Luna side project - Speculations ensue.

On July 7th, Cult of Luna posted a 50 second video on their Facebook page, along with the words “First snippet from Johannes new hardcore band Riwen.
3 song 10" out this fall.”

Clicking the link-word “Riwen” opens another Facebook page which already has over 1300 likes, and features the same video, along with two band photos. On them: three Swedes, all wearing denim and/or flannel, standing in a dim forest. I recognize Johannes from Cult of Luna, but not the two others.
The cryptic page features little information, aside from the band hailing from Norrland, Sweden, and being distributed by what is presumably a small Norwegian label.

The video itself is a 50 second teaser from, as they said, an upcoming 10”.
The music on it is in and of itself not that dissimilar from Cult of Luna, which shouldn’t be a surprise obviously. It’s likely that the dynamics will be a bit different though, especially since Riwen seems to have only three members and not nine million like Cult of Luna.


The teaser is exactly that. It’s quite ambiguous and leaves you wanting to hear more specifics. Cult of Luna’s Facebook page calls it a hardcore band, and while the similarities with COL material are certainly there, it could also be said that the teaser sounds a bit like Tragedy at a slower tempo. Only a bit though. There’s a Fall of Efrafa similarity in there somewhere, although honestly this sounds much more promising than FOE ever did in my ears.

It starts off in full band mode, although instrumental, with power chords and a picked melody on top of that. Drums and bass then come to a halt and the guitar melody grows darker, while a single voice starts to mutter something in Swedish which I can’t quite make out.

In The Woods

The comparison with Tragedy is there, but this is sombre in a different way, and in a sense features precision ahead of chaos, and chaos has to me been an oft-featured trait in Tragedy’s arsenal. The eerie melody towards the end of the clip also feels distinctly more post-rocky than Tragedy ever does, and while Tragedy has certainly dabbled in something that in a way resembles post-rock, those passages have always felt to me more apocalyptic than any post-rock material ever, does, aside from Godspeed perhaps.

Overall this sounds quite promising, and might be a great contribution to the dark hardcore genre, which sadly is mostly terrible to be honest. And this is coming from someone that likes Tragedy, Masakari, Alpinist and the like. Another thing that lowers any expectations I might have for this project is the fact I’ve long lost count on side projects from great bands that have turned out to be awful. But the teaser does sound pretty good, so fingers crossed I guess.
- Kristján Friðbjörn

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