If you’ve any attachment to the industrial scene, you’ve probably heard of Lustmord already. You’ll certainly have heard of the other bands he’s been part of or collaborated with (SPK, Nurse With Wound, Coil) or the soundtracks he’s scored as a “freelance sound designer” (The Crow, Underworld). That he was also invited to perform a live accompaniment to the Church of Satan’s first public ritual on 6th June 2006 should give you a good idea of the textures you’re going to find on Other.
‘Dark ambient’ is the genre label here, and as obvious as it is, it’s also pretty apposite. Other is entirely ambient, devoid of traditional song structures and lyrics… and it’s certainly dark. Lustmord opens the album with “Testament”, wherein the howling winds of a nuclear winter and the clanging of the last rusting church bell on the planet sum up every bleak prediction about the hubris of homo sapiens. It’s like some post-apocalyptic sci-fi spaghetti western featuring insectoid aliens stalking through the dust of human civilisation.
Before you know it, there’s been a seamless segue - and you’re a few minutes into listening to the stomach-gurgles of a sleeping giant in the midst of a wolf-haunted swamp in “Elements”. By this point, the vocabulary of Other has been established: bleakly ethereal atmospheres punctuated by vast droning synth sounds, bassy warps that shake your breakfast around in your guts while the hair on the back of your neck stands up and marches for the horizon.
There’s more variety than that might suggest, however. “Godeater” brings in scattered guitar chords, brief slivers of fuzzy chord or meandering scale dropped splashing into the sea of dark sound, followed by (or, more accurately, conjoined with) “Dark Awakening” which develops the guitars into a more central feature - there’s even an actual riff or two in there. It must be nice for Lustmord, when finding himself in need of some guitar parts, being able to call up his buddy Adam Jones and get him to take a day off from Tool. Regal Melvin King Buzzo also makes an appearance, as does Aaron “Isis” Turner… a pretty stellar list of heavy guitarists, considering Other is such an un-guitarish album.
You could criticise it for being a bit samey, sure, but that would be to miss the point. Other is a movie without visuals or dialogue, or a computer game without a first-person POV or a quest; and hence it hinges on themes and repeated sounds for its sense of continuity. It’s supposed to sound similar; it’s tension-horror cinema for your ears.
Also, you can’t hope to listen to Lustmord in the same way you do a regular band, because the entire aesthetic approach is completely different. This isn’t about songs, riffs and hooks; all the immediacy of pop and rock is entirely absent, and with good reason - it has no place when you attempt to paint a landscape with nothing in the foreground. This is creation of place, evocation of atmosphere, an entirely different set of rules and approaches. There’s no portrait, no narrative… because that’s where you come in as the listener. Lustmord’s Other waits for you to step through the frame and into an imagined world, and I recommend taking the chance.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: ambient, electronic, experimental, industrial, Lustmord, Other, soundtrack
