Album Review: The Cult Hidden City

The Cult have returned – battered and bruised but unbowed – with their tenth studio album Hidden City. The title is a translation of the Spanish phrase La Ciudad Oculta and in Astbury’s words "is a metaphor for our spiritual lives, our intimate interior lives.”

Said to be the final instalment in a trilogy starting with 2007’s Born Into This, Hidden City sees the band in characteristic blood and glory style.The hard/glam rock of their career high Sonic Temple is in evidence due in no small part to the return of Bob Rock on production detail.

Drums and bass, courtesy of John Tempesta and Grant Fitzpatrick respectively, thump and rumble in solid fashion while Billy Duffy’s guitar weaves, soars, batters and seduces, providing the required swagger to Astbury’s pomp.

Lyrically we’re in familiar Cult territory; Native American imagery (suckled by a wolf?!) peppering the usual tropes of loss, love and redemption. References to a boulevard abound – and you know the one, because we’ve all been there. Littered with broken dreams, you wake in its gutter with a pocketful of vomit wearing a stranger’s underpants. Who goes to The Cult for enlightenment, in any case?

Their raison d’etre is in providing darkly-romantic anthems, designed for stadiums. Something they do with great élan. While largely forgotten – it has been 25 years since their best-selling album – they are far from gone.

Key Track: ‘Dark Energy’

7/10