Journeying rapidly on from 2019's excellent A Dawn to Fear and last year's solid Raging River EP, Sweden's sludge sons are back on the road, and as any fan of this consistent act will know already, deliver yet again. It isn't immediately obvious that The Long Road North is a distinct album from its predecessors on initial listens, clearly sharing a lot of DNA from the blaring ambient backing and overtly technical drumming. And even though clearly a tremendous album, statements that praise it as blowing A Dawn to Fear away are beyond hyperbole, particularly when you remind yourself how good a record that was. It's not even really an improvement from that, just another more than superb piece of post-metal that reminds you precisely why everyone fell for it and declared it the future of the genre back in the day.

Cold Burn, for instance, opens and builds downright perfectly, the touches of melody just right to add light to the overwhelming gloomy sludge, fading after nine minutes that feel like five. The title track is one of the highlights, bold and brash, pounding at your ears before subsiding into a relatively pleasant hum. But the fact that Cult of Luna are expert at the sludgier moments should not need telling and indeed the most interesting moments here are the more experimental ones, which seize your attention from the comfortable lull the album otherwise puts you in. The two Beyond pieces are the most obvious, the first featuring female vocalist Mariam Wallentin in a strident, almost gothic performance that fits in well with the tinkling ambience behind, the second Colin Stetson in an even ghostlier piece of ambience. Into the Night is one of the better such pieces, clean-sung and reflective, answering one real criticism about Cult of Luna that they can be a little too samey and one-note at times, even if it strays into Radiohead territory!

Conversely, Full Moon is pretty much an empty build and could easily have been cut from this hour-plus album. Yet by and large there's absolutely nothing to cut from this album, an eternal sign of quality. Even the longer tracks feel like they earn their length, the pensive An Offering to the Wild especially having such an infectious use of melody behind the sludge spine that it's easy to wish that Cult of Luna never experiment again! Of course, they'll have to; that aforementioned criticism of the band for sticking too closely to a certain style will bite harder the more albums that come out sounding like this, and looking back across their discography it is easy to see the beginning of a potential rut taking shape given the sheer progressions that heralded previous albums like Eternal Kingdom and Somewhere Along the Highway as distinct and individual masterpieces. So there's room for pessimism as to the band's longer-term prospects, yet for the moment Cult of Luna have done it again - The Long Road North is an excellent trip to take.