Thematically and musically adjacent to Monsterworks, Thūn and Bull Elephant….Jon figured why not start up yet another band!?
Hence Moose Cult was born, leaning on the reliable brothers in arms of Hugo (Monsterworks, Thūn) playing fretless bass for the first time and James Knoerl on drums (Gargoyl, Thūn), with a new collaborator in Tommy Loose (Smokescreen, solo artist) on lead guitar.
The band concept is an “envirometal” ode to preserving nature although, when the guys at All4band.com were finished with the artwork, it looks like something entirely more sinister, which carried over to the second album BOOK OF MACHINES, inspired by “Erewhon” (1872) by Samuel Butler. The novel is one of the first to explore ideas of artificial intelligence, as influenced by Darwin’s recently published On the Origin of Species (1859) and the machines developed out of the Industrial Revolution (late 18th to early 19th centuries).
In the three-chapter “Book of the Machines”, Butler ponders the potentially dangerous ideas of machine consciousness and self-replication.