The Cult's Ian Astbury took on the role of peacemaker mid-gig last night (July 19) when an altercation took place during his band's headline performance at Washington DC club The Anthem.
In footage uploaded to YouTube by user Creative Underground, an angry Astbury jumps off-stage during a performance of the group's 1985 single Rain, to admonish one audience member in the front who allegedly had another fan in a chokehold. After breaking up the scuffle, Astbury can been hugging a man in the venue's front row, and giving a second man a piece of his mind.
Back onstage, the 60-year-old vocalist has some strong words for the alleged aggressor, telling him, "Brother, never, ever put a chokehold on somebody, it's not fucking cool.. That's what the pig does!"
Watch the incident unfold below:
The Cult's new album. Under The Midnight Sun will be released on October 11.
Under The Midnight Sun was recorded by English producer Tom Dalgety, who's also worked with Pixies, Ghost and Therapy?, and was inspired by Astbury's experience at the Provinssirock festival, held in the city of Seinäjoki in Southern Ostrobothnia, Western Finland.
"It’s three in the morning, the sun’s up, and there’s all these beautiful people in this halcyon moment,” reminisces Astbury. “People are laying on the grass, making out, drinking, smoking. There were rows of flowers at the front of the stage from the performances earlier that evening. It was an incredible moment.
“When the world stopped, I had this moment to write in real time, to calculate. I was compelled by this vision, this anomaly, this memory, of being under the midnight sun. Tom helped us bring a new musical shape and frequency to our process.
“At the core of it all, music contains the vibrational frequency of how we once communicated before we could even speak. Bird songs, animal calls, string theory, quantum physics, psychedelics. The record ultimately is about finding and uniting beauty in those strangely natural moments."
The band resume their We Own The Night tour tonight, July 20, in New York.
