Become one with The Cult at the Arizona State Fair

The Cult is headed to the Arizona State Fair for a 7 p.m. show on Oct. 25 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and guess who is opening for them? They are.

How does that work? Before frontman Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy settled on The Cult as their name, they performed as Death Cult. That name evolved from Ian’s previous band, Southern Death Cult.

A few years ago, Astbury and Duffy revived Death Cult for some live shows, and now they’re doing it again. The decision, Astbury unabashedly says, was prompted by “intelligence.”

“Emotional intelligence,” he adds, taking it further and explaining how the present time is an exceptional time for this to happen.

“Our band has always done things our way, so this particular incarnation of this tour isn’t a nostalgic tip of the hat. It’s more that we’re in a renaissance right now and everything is on the table. Everything is on equal footing in terms of our body of work. … Perhaps with digital technology and social media, nostalgia has almost been eradicated in some way. From that perspective, everything we’ve ever written is current.” 

“Think of a Rothko painting,” Astbury says. “If you maintain that train of thought, it doesn’t matter if it was painted 2000 years ago or yesterday. It’s your immediate experience in front of that painting that matters.”

That perspective, should you choose to activate it, truly can broaden your expectations. Rather than labeling bands that have been playing for several years as ‘nostalgia acts,’ save the nostalgia part for yourself. Enjoy the memories the music may conjure, but dig the bands for where they’re at presently. 

Since releasing music as The Cult, they’ve dropped numerous hits, from the early “Spiritwalker,” to “Rain,” “She Sells Sanctuary” and “Fire Woman” — the list continues — which you’ll surely get a tast of at the show, as well as other career-spanning tracks that boast their big sound that mixes hard rock, gothic rock and a little metal.”

Further emphasizing the desire to not only be present in the moment, Astbury says creating each show’s set is “setting an intention to create a visceral experience.”

“It’s an immersive, visceral experience for the people who come. We become one amorphous entity, and then we disperse. Perhaps it’s a heady or esoteric way to think, but I think it reflects where we are now. We are beyond genre, we are beyond format. Everything’s on the table,” he says, citing artists who create multidimensional worlds that inspire him, from Matthew Barney to David Lynch.

No band is going to be around for as long as The Cult has and not have ridden the roller coaster both ways with a few loops in the middle. Staying true, though, to their inherent ways of looking at the world is why Astbury says they’ve always remained an “outlier, but not by intention or design — certainly not.”

Navigating the business at a younger age certainly reinforces keeping an awareness of your convictions and staying steeped in them. 

“Signing contracts when you’re almost a child in perpetuity to adults who knew what they were doing in terms of corraling and manipulating and taking advantage of youthful naivete, well, it’s not being coerced necessarily, but it is a time in life when you certainly might not have the wherewithal to fully understand the implications of what you were putting your signature to until later in life. When you begin to understand how that realm works with conditions and contracts and obligations and what happens when those things aren’t fulfilled, you learn to respond in the moment with what you’ve got and what resources you have available to you.”

As far as what the future holds for The Cult, the band isn’t thinking of that right now.

“We are fully in the moment of the tour. There are so many parts. We have a high-wire act and there’s no safety net. Nutrition, sleep, meditation, contemplation and maintenance are how we spend our time. You have to be fully present — especially the way we perform,” Astbury says.

“We don’t waddle out there and waddle through songs, that’s just not our style,” he laughs. 

The Cult and Death Cult play at 7 p.m. (doors at 6 p.m.) at Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fair. Tickets start at $38.15.