Cult Of Luna leader Johannes Persson has explained how Nine Inch Nails mainman Trent Reznor snuck a song by his old metal band Khoma into a blockbuster film.
The Swedish singer/guitarist, who works as a casting director when he isn’t walloping audiences with post-metal, was in charge of wrangling extras for 2011’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which was directed by David Fincher (Seven, Gone Girl, Mindhunter) and starred ex-James Bond Daniel Craig.
Though the two never met, Persson and Reznor were colleagues on the project, as the alt-rock star was hired to compose the score. Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, Persson reveals that during production, Fincher and his wife/producer Ceán Chaffin asked him to send over all of his music.
“Three, four weeks later, I was standing by this mountain next to David,” Persson continues, “and he hit me in the ribs with his elbow. He said, ‘I love that song.’ What? ‘The song that Trent picked.’ Trent Reznor?!”
Fincher then explained that Reznor had chosen Khoma’s 2006 track The Guillotine for inclusion in the film. “The only thing I could say was, ‘I wrote that song in 10 minutes!’” Persson remembers. “His response was, ‘Imagine how good it would have been if you spent 15 on it!’ Ha ha! But it wouldn’t have been. Sometimes things just happen.”
Cult Of Luna members Persson and Fredrik Kihlberg (guitars) started Khoma with singer Jan Jämte in 2002. The band made four studio albums between 2004 and 2012 but have since descended into inactivity. Persson tells Hammer that the band “could have become really, really big”, yet their momentum was scuppered by the members having outside interests.
“[Jämte] worked as a journalist and then he went back to university,” he says. “I think everybody thought, ‘When we get the tour offers, studying can wait.’ But that wasn’t so.”
Persson co-founded Cult Of Luna in 1998, and Kihlberg joined the lineup in 2004. Along with Neurosis and Isis, they are considered one of the biggest and most influential bands in the post-metal scene. Their 2016 collaborative album with American vocalist Julie Christmas, Mariner, charted in Sweden, Finland, Belgium and Switzerland.
The band will release their 10th album, In The Shadow Of Your Shadow, on November 6. They have a string of European and UK tour dates confirmed for February and March. Tickets are available now.
