How The Cult’s new music was inspired by a pre-pandemic festival

English rockers The Cult tapped into a simpler, pre-pandemic time to find inspiration for its latest album, “Under the Midnight Sun,” which will be released on Oct. 7.

It’s the band’s first new record since 2016’s “Hidden City,” and while it was primarily recorded during the pandemic, the roots of these songs go back decades.

“This new album is a really honest, authentic depiction of where we are today,” vocalist Ian Astbury said during a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles as The Cult prepared for its latest tour, which includes a hometown stop at the Greek Theatre on Oct. 9.

“It’s a very focused record and it’s layered, it’s dense, it’s celebratory and it gets dark,” he continued. “There’s a lot in this record. It’s an amalgamation of The Cult’s major influences, the DNA of the band all culminating in a very special moment.”

Not long ago, he was reviewing old footage from the Provinssirock music festival in Finland, where the band performed in 1986. It reminded him of walking around at 3 a.m. under the Arctic sun and seeing people lying in the grass, just hanging out, drinking wine and having a good time. He also remembered the colorful rows of flowers that covered the front of the stage.

“It was a beautiful atmosphere at this festival,” he said. “It was such a beautiful, perfect moment where everyone was connected and it’s the type of moment you wish you could take with you everywhere you go.”

Astbury used those old fuzzy feelings as inspiration for songs like “Give Me Mercy,” which is the first single off the album and sounds like a classic Cult song thanks to Astbury’s commanding vocals and guitarist Billy Duffy’s melodic riffs that hearken back to the duo’s iconic ’80s sound. Though sonically it feels like a throwback, the lyrical content speaks to today’s social climate.