Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil is a work that wrapped Billy Duffy’s sharp riffs and Ian Astbury’s commanding singing in a thick, hard sound. While keeping the former psychedelic air, it clearly strengthens the heaviness. It is a comeback the band completed by regrouping after several years of hiatus. Linear aggression centered on “Rise” and shadowed melody coexist. Songs like “The Saint,” “Breathe” and “American Gothic” breathe the band’s full playing too. Welcoming Bob Rock as producer again, the sound gained a modern weight. Not only filling the gap from the mid-1990s but sounding THE CULT’s idiom with a new texture, it is a record that powerfully showed the band was alive and well.