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LUSTMORD

Progressive Electronic • United Kingdom


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Lustmord biography
Brian WILLIAMS - Born 1964-01-09 (North Wales, UK)

Brian Williams, or LUSTMORD, confines his entire dark, deeming, deep and dueling art, on an electronic and artificial passion, inside various ways, productions and, thus, acceptances. He debuted as Lustmørd (variations, overall his career, point as well towards Lust Mord, B. Lustmord etc.) in 1981, creating hard ambient and particular industrial sounds. His first steps also resembled a work on drumming, machine and mayhem programming in the clustered SPK ensemble, plus in a TERROR AGAINST TERROR group, which basically can be described as a hard techno sampling artistry. Among, inside or after other such side projects or aliases releases (Arecibo, Isolubin BK), his entire discography and music expression catches a lot more stability starting 1991. Till present time, he has come to define a palisade of activity, demonstration and performance, yet most importantly comes the music, challenging the in-depth of modern electronic ambient emphasis, for which the technical becomes a work of art, the expression is entirely guided by feelings and by expression, plus the sound resonates the gambol of experimental pitches towards deep self-voiced power arrangements. Usually he goes defined as dark ambient, industrial desolator and psychical expressionist; but the first two are heavily disapproved by the artist himself and, for sure, express a more profound and deep nature than it can be broadly accepted.

For electronic progressive, the specter of collaborations, the work side orientation and anything at a level of commercial boost (which, sincerely, does happen to this artist more than to others) finds irrelevancy, as long as music is the confident deep never-dousing tone. A quick swift through the character of LUSTMORD, as an entire artist, highlights, as most healthy collaborations and music results, those with Robert RICH, Paul HASLINGER, JARBOE, BLACK METAL or THE MELVINS, plus the mass sound design orientation, which comes to epitomize the modern language with the vast perspective, whether it goes into his music and contemplation, or reaches out towards games, crafts, systems and powers. Continuing down the full perspective (but also, obviously, reaching more risky points than there are valorous ones) LUSTMORD collaborated with TOOL (on their singles, plus on the "10.000" days album), Monica Richards, Adi Newton, Andrew Largowski, John Murphy, Steve Roach, Larsen, Gang Of Four, Mortiis, Alan L...
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LUSTMORD discography


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LUSTMORD top albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

1.15 | 4 ratings
Lustmørd
1981
1.67 | 3 ratings
Lustmørdekay (Live Evil)
1982
3.15 | 7 ratings
Paradise Disowned
1986
3.56 | 15 ratings
Heresy
1990
2.96 | 5 ratings
The Monstrous Soul
1992
4.44 | 15 ratings
The Place Where the Black Stars Hang
1994
4.00 | 2 ratings
Stalker (collaboration with Robert Rich)
1995
3.30 | 10 ratings
Metavoid
2001
3.43 | 8 ratings
Zoetrope (OST)
2002
3.49 | 7 ratings
Carbon / Core
2004
3.92 | 7 ratings
Melvins & Lustmord: Pigs Of The Roman Empire
2004
2.88 | 5 ratings
Juggernaut
2007
3.93 | 8 ratings
Other
2008
3.83 | 8 ratings
The Word as Power
2013
3.85 | 8 ratings
Dark Matter
2016
4.00 | 2 ratings
Trinity
2020
4.00 | 1 ratings
Alter (collaboration with Karin Park)
2021

LUSTMORD Live Albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

3.86 | 3 ratings
Lustmord Rising
2006
0.00 | 0 ratings
Kraków
2013
0.00 | 0 ratings
Stockholm
2014
0.00 | 0 ratings
Maschinenfest
2019
0.00 | 0 ratings
Hobart
2019

LUSTMORD Videos (DVD, Blu-ray, VHS etc)

LUSTMORD Boxset & Compilations (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

4.00 | 1 ratings
Heretic
1990
1.00 | 2 ratings
A Document of Early Acoustic & Tactical Experimentation
1991
3.49 | 7 ratings
Purifying Fire
2000
3.50 | 2 ratings
Beyond
2009
5.00 | 2 ratings
Dark Places of the Earth
2009
4.00 | 2 ratings
Songs of Gods and Demons
2011

LUSTMORD Official Singles, EPs, Fan Club & Promo (CD, EP/LP, MC, Digital Media Download)

5.00 | 1 ratings
Strange Attractor
1996
3.00 | 1 ratings
Other Dub
2009

LUSTMORD Reviews


Showing last 10 reviews only
 Alter (collaboration with Karin Park) by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 2021
4.00 | 1 ratings

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Alter (collaboration with Karin Park)
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by nick_h_nz
Collaborator Prog Metal / Heavy Prog Team

— First review of this album —
4 stars [Originally published as a mini review at The Progressive Aspect]

Welsh composer Lustmord is someone I've been familiar of for quite some time, largely because of his work with Graeme Revell (firstly as part of seminal industrial, noise and ambient outfit SPK and then for his work with Revell on soundtracks for films such as The Crow) and Tool (for whom he remixed songs from Lateralus and provided atmospherics for 10,000 Days). Yet, though he is someone whose work I've always meant to investigate, ALTER is the first Lustmord album I've ever heard. And, typically, I suppose given my history with Lustmord, I came to it because of Karin Park's involvement more than anything else. But regardless of how I came to it, I'm glad I did as it's a spectacularly great album, albeit spectacular is perhaps an odd choice of word when the music is so understated. But then, Lustmord is somewhat a master of this form, and generally recognised as one of the originators and pioneers of what has become known as dark ambient.

It is unsurprising, then, that much of this album has the kind of cinematic qualities that draw comparisons to a film soundtrack, in particular of the horror variety. Karin Park (probably best known from Årabrot, but with a solo career as well) provides an additional layer and texture of sound that is incorporated in different ways, rather than simply soaring over the top, as I admit I had expected them to. I also didn't expect an album of, let's face it, such bleak, oppressive, dark and minimal music to be so compelling. While it is dark, and at times desolate in its minimalism and introversion, there is a surprising amount of variation within a theme, and this is fairly evenly split between the contributions of Lustmord and Karin Park. I guess that isn't surprising, given that this is a release credited to Lustmord and Park, rather than Lustmord with Park, and yet I'm still impressed by how much Park adds to proceedings. As well as vocals, Karin also plays keyboards (most notably and impactfully on Kindred).

I mentioned The Crow, as a soundtrack that Lustmord worked with Revell on, and there are moments on ALTER that I find reminiscent of that film - even if they don't necessarily sound anything like the incidental music from The Crow. Rather, the aesthetic and the aural pictures the sounds paint make me think of The Crow. It is something about the colour and texture of the music, rather than the sound. The Void Between, the second track and one of my favourites here, is one that make me dream a crow-black dream. The thing is, I say one of my favourites, but it would almost be easier to say which tracks are not favourites, as each flows into something that seems as great, if not greater, than what preceded it. As Perihelion follows The Void Between, and Twin Flames follows Perihelion, I reconsider favourites, and then reconcile myself to the fact that they're all favourites. Each track is greatly similar, and vastly different from the last. There is both contrast and consistency within each piece, holding the attention until the last note fades.

 The Word as Power by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 2013
3.83 | 8 ratings

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The Word as Power
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by Peacock Feather

4 stars The Word As Power became the first release of the famous dark ambient master Lustmord, in which the vocals are put at the forefront. Well, how to say... rather vocalise, as it is simply impossible to identify anything concrete from such glossolalia, reminiscent of Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance. What's even more ironic is that in the compositions here, you can't recognize the big names stated in the press release, and if the name of Aina Skinnes Olsen does not say anything to the standard listener, although her voice appears in 4 compositions out of 7, it's really hard to recognize Jarboe in Andras Sodom, and it's impossible to recognize Maynard James Keenan himself, who voices in Abaddon.

Well, what about names, still it's about music. The Word As Power is a ritual dark ambient with folk motifs. The space of the album is amazing, exposing another familiar skeleton of Lustmord, but with its special muscles. These muscles grow from the creativity of the already mentioned Dead Can Dance (especially Yulunga from Into the Labyrinth) and classical ritual, shamanic music.

Hypnotizing, enveloping dark ambient keeps in suspense all 74 minutes of timekeeping. A sample of almost biblical dark ambient, though Lustmord himself is an atheist, but it is no coincidence that the name of the album has something in common with the first line of the Gospel of John. The power of the word is truly powerful, and this album clearly demonstrates it.

 The Place Where the Black Stars Hang by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 1994
4.44 | 15 ratings

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The Place Where the Black Stars Hang
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by Peacock Feather

5 stars The figure of Brian Williams towers over the whole stage of the dark ambient, it can not be defeated, not demolished, like the statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, he looks over all the dark matter generated by such a "musical" (in a good way) genre. The Place Where The Black Stars Hang is an example of Lustmord's canonical work.

This album throws back both infinitely tense and intimidating soundscapes of Heresy, and the radicality of Monstrous Soul, and now before the eyes, well, or in front of the ears of the listener only endless expanses of cold and uncomfortable space. The feeling of comparative softness of the material is artfully deceptive, as we already have a completely different opening, sky-high level of darkness, more vague, more frightening and therefore more fascinating and striking imagination.

The Place Where The Black Stars Hang is an example of the perfect game with psychoacoustics, in its own way progressive thing, magnificent from the initial Sol Om On to the final passages of Dog Star Descends. Individual highlights - Dark Companion and especially Metastatic Resonance. A truly mesmerizing composition! This album for me is Lustmord's magnum opus and one of the key ambient creations in the history of music. An absolute masterpiece.

 Carbon / Core by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 2004
3.49 | 7 ratings

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Carbon / Core
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by Warthur
Prog Reviewer

4 stars Lustmord's general approach seemed to have been locked in by The Place Where the Black Stars Hang, and Carbon/Core is largely a continuation of that. There is, of course, a question of just how unnerved and spooked out you can be by dark ambient music when you have largely come to expect you're going to hear, but then again just as there is the fear of the unexpected - the jump scare, the awful revelation, and so on - there is also a fear of the expected. You know that this is going to be a dark trip through cyberpunk hell, but you listen anyway - because it's just that good.
 Dark Matter by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 2016
3.85 | 8 ratings

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Dark Matter
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by admireArt
Prog Reviewer

4 stars "Derived from an audio library of cosmological activity collected between 1993 and 2003. It was gathered from various sources including NASA (Cape Canaveral, Ames, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arecibo), The Very Large Array, The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and various educational institutions and private contributors throughout the USA."-LUSTMORD.

Lustmord's "DARK MATTER", 2016, presents 3 very visual, dense atmosphered, space music related tracks which have been polished up to perfection.

One of the great attributes this project holds, among many, is how palpable and evident it is to notice Lustmord's music composition talents evolution.

Other great attribute relies on how much stronger and focused his "obscure spirit" turns out in these dark space travel dronescapes by the slow and wide development of its melody lines, structured towards simplification (not simplicity) and sound engineered to highlight each and every angle simultaneously. And of course all enhanced by the extraordinary library of sounds previously described.

Another great attribute is the keen eye for creative details even the imperceptible ones (you will be surprised!) and last but not least, the perfect running time, not a minute less or more, which equals non expendable sections or tracks.

****4.5 PA stars.

 Heresy by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 1990
3.56 | 15 ratings

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Heresy
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by Warthur
Prog Reviewer

4 stars B. Lustmord's own notes on Heresy claim that the album was recorded in various underground locations and is based around "psycho-acoustic phenomena and the physical effects of low frequency information" - in other words, it's a slow-paced ambient album in which not very much happens, but what does happen is deeply spooky with it. Constituting either actual field recordings or cleverly faked ones - it's hard to tell - this is an album which will rumble on mysteriously in the background before ambushing you with strange little events, like a gun blast followed by bestial snarling and the wail of a child. I am not sure what is supposed to be happening here, but I do know I am supposed to be afraid of it - and the album accomplishes that mission just fine.
 The Place Where the Black Stars Hang by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 1994
4.44 | 15 ratings

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The Place Where the Black Stars Hang
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by Warthur
Prog Reviewer

5 stars An incredible dark ambient journey through bad neighbourhoods of outer space, The Place Where the Black Stars Hang presents a massive, daunting, and deeply rewarding electronic experience. Some of the calmer and more ambient portions of the Quake soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails delves close to this sort of territory, but it is across these three massive central tracks (plus their shorter prelude and coda) that the sounds in question really grow into their own. Like being trapped in a drifting spaceship you are unable to fix and listening to the computer systems slowy die and the oxygen leaking out, it's one of the most morbid ambient albums I have ever heard.
 Zoetrope (OST) by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 2002
3.43 | 8 ratings

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Zoetrope (OST)
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by Dobermensch
Prog Reviewer

3 stars I almost had to check I'd stuck the correct disc in at the beginning of 'Zoetrope' as it sounds startlingly similar to the really spooky 'Jupiter and Beyond' sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. That part where all the discordant operatic vocals wail and whine.

This Lustmord recording has all the usual dark, cavernous, hugely reverberated sound that his preceding albums contain. The production qualities on this one are superior, and the musical content has become more fluid and varied with a lot of violent sudden stabbing effects.

I'm surprised no movie producers have approached Brian Williams, as his recordings would make great horror soundtracks. Although apparently he had some input in 'The Crow' from 1994.

Some parts are quite dramatic with what sound like steel man-hole covers spinning like coins before wobbling to a thunderous clang. Dramatic hammering and electronic whooshing becomes more prevalent after the half way point . I'm sure I can hear evidence of the 'EMS Synthi AKS' software package at play.

Lots of whispering goblins and gargoyles are guaranteed to send a shiver up your spine in 'Amalgamated man' The tracks with sampled vocals are very effective indeed adding a real intensity that the instrumental tracks seem to lack. The sound of bones being sawed and screeching metallic wires only add to my sadistic enjoyment.

Strangely the poorest track is the one where there's a semblance of tune - 'End Titles' has some already horribly dated keyboard violin strings and a boring straight beat.

There won't be a large catchment area for 'Zoetrope'. It's a grim, dark and unhappy album. Just the kind of stuff I like... There are far creepier albums available but this is a pretty solid effort from the Welshman.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and change my nappy.

 Heresy by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 1990
3.56 | 15 ratings

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Heresy
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by admireArt
Prog Reviewer

4 stars Slow descent to the obscure!

Before anything else, this is close to contemporary classical music (i.e. Stockhausen's "Trans"), rather than the average prog rootings, which explains the low ratings, for such an exquisite work. But that seems irrelevant as soon as you open the gates of Lustmord's "Heresy" 1990.

As opposed to expectations, this "Heresy" is minimally constructed. It deals close to the "Minimalistic/Ambiental" tagging also, if you happen to be living in hell of course!

And this is exactly where this work stands out., instead of playing all the possible exagerations depicting this "underworld" or hell or whatever dark or un- gods you pray on, these environments assume you as an already living being in these lands. The air you breathe, the colors missing, the feeling of living in such an unlighted place and yet still be left to dwell free in its "godless" beauties.

No horror-movie antics or "wild" useless fireworks!

Impeccable, dark, minimal, weightless electronics, outlining a possible heretic and "peaceful" portrait of our own known and obscure and sad planet earth.

(Yes! This is not "happy" prog, not at all!!)

****4 PA stars.

 The Word as Power by LUSTMORD album cover Studio Album, 2013
3.83 | 8 ratings

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The Word as Power
Lustmord Progressive Electronic

Review by admireArt
Prog Reviewer

4 stars "Blackest Ever Black"

The record label's name is the "keyword" for this exciting adventure named "The Word as Power", Lustmord's 2013 release, which as promised, for the first time introduces "live" voices, to his pitch black, electronic aesthetics.

Sacred dark music, which even being non-religious, is close to middle East's canons of composition, without the drumming, but in spirit and depth. The musical compositions dare to be "obscure", but not by the "satanic" paraphernalia standards, people associate this kind of "dark" projects and music with. In fact, being that he has vocal guests, he "hosts" them with extreme care and attention. He, as the owner of his own musical language, by now is very well skilled with any kind of "collaboration" project with other musicians, (he has one with Robert Rich which appears under Rich's name here in PA). Although, this one goes only with his name, it will be unfair not to mention his 3 guests: Jarboe- voice of "Andras Sodom", Maynard James Keenan- voice of "Abaddon" and Soriah-voice of "Grigori".

So, feel prepared for an un-holy ritualistic "obscure" mass of Lustmord's "black" electronics/acoustics, enhancing the attributes and skills of the human voice or its "powers", its lights and darkness. In a simmilar kind of tenor like Jocelyn Pook's "Flood" , 1999, recording.

****4 "Electronic audiophile" PA stars, that should be appreciated by anyone in the Prog listening universe.

Thanks to Ricochet for the artist addition. and to Quinino for the last updates

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