The Cult: The making of their 1989 album sonic Temple

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Coming off of the commercial success of 1987’s “Electric,” the Cult was about to go to the next level. Their follow up 1989’s Sonic Temple would prove to be the Cult’s most commercially successful album and was certified platinum. It Peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and created four top 20 Mainstream Rock Songs hits.

Yet, it was produced in entirely different circumstances than “Electric” was. The band opted to re-record their original tracks the ycut for Electric as it sounded too similar to their previous record 1985’s Love. The band wanted a more stripped down no nonsense sound so they enlisted an up and coming producer in Rick Rubin.

In a 2019 interview with Loudwire.com, Bill Duffy talks about how challenging “Electric” was for the band to make:

[The album] just wasn't where we wanted to be, so when Rick [Rubin] came in, he was the straw that we were clutching at because we had this album and we were terribly frustrated that we spent so much time and money and energy trying to make it good. But Rick came in, like Rick has proven to be, a pretty no-nonsense character, and we made Electric. But I think we left some of the stuff behind. We left some of the uniqueness of The Cult behind and Electric was part of the stuff.
You could say that Sonic Temple was a it of a homecoming for the band, and an even deeper dive into Ian Astbury’s metaphysical inclinications.

Although Astbury is British, he spent most of his time being brought up in Eastern Canada, in the province of Ontario. As a boy, he visited one of the local inidigenous reserves and it’s a memory he’s come back to time and time again. The exact location was the Six Nations of the Grand River in Southern Ontario. Musically, he was also a big fan of David Bowie.

With Sonic Temple, the band remained as eclectic as ever, if not in their musical style then with the topics of these songs - covering topics from teenagers in France, to one of Andy Warhol’s Factory girls to the theme of the powerful yet unattainable women.

There seems to be a feeling of longing throughout the album - whether that’s for a past that doesn’t exist any more or a beautiful women who is out of reach or has even died.

Sonic Temple was recorded in Vancouver Canada (on the west coast, in case you don’t know it) at Little Mountain Sound Recording Studio.

Ian felt a kinship with Bob because they both had Canadian roots, and he though Bob would better understand the nuances of British Rock than an American producer would. The album’s name comes from the Bonus track “Medicine Train” which features the lyric sonic temple.”

It was clear that the band wasn’t entirely happy with how “Electric” had come out, given such a drastic change in both the producer and studio location. But the band also had another goal on their mind becoming more established in America with Duffy telling Loudersound “I was very focused, personally, bound and determined, that The Cult should have a platinum album in America,”

One of the signatures of the band, besides their genre-bending catalogue was the mind of frontman Ian Astbury. In a 2013 Interview with Glide Magazine online he was asked if he ever scared people with his intelligence and replied:

we all have different callings. Everybody is struggling with this paradox, this existential problem of what is the meaning of life. People put like decades of their lives into their children. Why? Why are they of value? Why aren’t you of value? Why do you put decades of your life into your child? Your child will at some point have to become self-reliant to survive, to attain better breeding rights, to attain more enlightenment, and here’s how it works – you work hard, you get money; with money you have luxury time; with luxury time you have meditation time; with meditation time you get more time to experience the philosophical. This knowledge is available to you.

Sonic Temple features a handful of iconic songs like Fire Woman, Edie (Ciao Baby) and Sweet Soul Sister.
Let’s talk a little bit about the meaning behind the album’s biggest hits.three famous songs.
Fire Woman is about the universal symbol of the femme fatale, but also influenced wby Ian Astbury’s fascination with indigenous culture


Sweet Soul Sister was written in Paris and is