The Cult are a British rock band formed in 1983. Before settling on their current name in January 1984, the band performed under the name Death Cult, which was an evolution of the name of lead singer Ian Astbury's previous band Southern Death Cult. They gained a dedicated following in the UK in the mid-1980s as a post-punk/gothic rock band, with singles such as "She Sells Sanctuary", before breaking mainstream in the United States in the late 1980s as a hard rock band with singles such as "Love Removal Machine" and "Fire Woman". According to music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the band fuse a "heavy metal revivalist" sound with the "pseudo-mysticism ... of The Doors [and] the guitar-orchestrations of Led Zeppelin ... while adding touches of post-punk goth rock".

In 1991, Astbury and Duffy were writing again for their next album. During the demo recordings, Todd Hoffman and James Kottak played bass and drums respectively. During the actual album recording sessions, Curry was recruited again to play drums, with Charley Drayton on bass, and various other performers. Astbury and Duffy's working relationship had disintegrated by that time, with the two men reportedly rarely even being in the studio together during recording. The resulting album Ceremony was released to mixed responses. The album climbed to US No. 34, but sales were not as impressive as the previous three records, only selling around one million copies worldwide. Only two official singles were released from the record: "Wild Hearted Son" (UK No. 34, Canada No. 41) and "Heart of Soul" (UK No. 50), although "White" was released as a single only in Canada, "Sweet Salvation" was released as a single (as "Dulce Salvacion") in Argentina in 1992, and the title track "Ceremony" was released in Spain.  The Cult's Ceremonial Stomp tour went through Europe in 1991 and North America in 1992. In 1991 the Cult played a show at the Marquee Club in London, which was recorded and released in February 1993, packaged with some vinyl UK copies of their first greatest hits release. Only a handful of CD copies of it were ever manufactured originally, however it was subsequently reissued on CD in 1999. An incomplete bootleg video of this show is also in circulation.  The band were sued by the parents of the Native American boy pictured on the cover of Ceremony, for alleged exploitation and for the unauthorized use of the child's image. This image of the boy is also burned in the video for "Wild Hearted Son". This lawsuit delayed the release of Ceremony in many countries including South Korea and Thailand, which did not see the record's release until late 1992, and it was unreleased in Turkey until the Cult played several shows in Istanbul in June 1993.  A world tour followed with backing from future Thin Lizzy drummer Michael Lee and bassist Kinley Wolfe, and keyboardist John Sinclair returning one last time, and the Gathering of the Tribes moved to the UK. Here artists such as Pearl Jam performed. The warm-up gig to the show, in a small nightclub, was dedicated to the memory of Nigel Preston, who had died a few weeks earlier at the age of 31. Following the release of the single "The Witch" (#9 in Australia) and the performance of a song for the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie soundtrack entitled "Zap City", produced by Steve Brown and originally a B-side to "Lil' Devil", two volumes of remixes of "She Sells Sanctuary", called Sanctuary Mixes MCMXCIII, volumes one and two, and in support of Pure Cult: for Rockers, Ravers, Lovers, and Sinners, a greatest hits compilation which debuted at No. 1 on the British charts and later went to number one in Portugal, Astbury and Duffy fired the "backing band" and recruited Craig Adams (the Mission) and Scott Garrett for performances across Europe in 1993, with some shows featuring Mike Dimkich on rhythm guitar. This tour marked the first time the band performed in Turkey, Greece, and the Slovak Republic.

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