Ah. A precious night arrives as here we have the absolute legendary entity that is Lustmord arriving to prove that only true vision and genius can do dark ambient so well. Brian Williams, the Welsh maestro behind this name, returns with a full studio album breaking a run of numerous ‘single’ collaborations with a huge range of distinguished musicians from Karin Park to Ihsahn and a range of film and game soundtracks, live works, remixes and the spectacular ‘The Others’ interpretations of Lustmord works. I think like many Lustmord was first brought to my attention (though well after its initial release) by the monstrous, still terrifying ‘Heresy’ and that pitched me, via Black Mountain Transmitter and Inade into a dizzying number of strange universes.

But a new studio album from Lustmord is special event.

With a cover that strangely and, for those who are fans, appropriately reminds me of the From Software ‘Soulsborne’ games and offers only questions, we open up the gate and step through.

Ambient albums will very much always be an experience as a whole. It is always how the work affects you in its entirety and in its essence. Dim Light’s ‘Starspire’ album took me on a strange, eerily quiet walk through a distant decaying future culture. Ord And Demonologists ‘Secret Ceremonies’ trapped us within a ritual space where things didn’t perhaps turn out as the supplicants intended. Lustmord?

‘Behold A Voice As Thunder’ slowly rises before you; ponderous and ominous single beats strike as the space opens with layering of keyboards, distant strikes and droning sounds that slide between drone and drawn out vocal sounds. Perhaps it is the influence of the cover, maybe not, but there is not the suggestion of one presence, but of the gradual realisation that there may be watchers here. A hint of their footprints in this world maybe. ‘Entrails Of The God Machine’ leads me down past incomprehensible remains of something. I try not to look too hard. The atmosphere is thick, dark, and so very still. ‘An Angel Dissected’ taunts with ideas of echoes of some glorious entity or event cruelly ruptured with sounds that evoke a rising heavenly trumpet chorus feeling the inevitable encroachment of darker menacing sounds.

And of course your journey may be different.

For me this eerie, unflinching album is almost the tour of a penitent, led through some atrocity exhibition where something, some things, have visited incomprehensible destruction on entities beyond my comprehension and the realisation that these unseen presences are still here. But even here there are shades of grey and hints of glory. ‘Invocation Of The Nameless’ brings those arching heraldic sounds to the fore, strange rays of hazy light that somehow pierce the shifting grey. And yet the consequence appears to be ‘Their Souls Asunder’ a slow motion personal apocalypse. ‘Hence They Shall Be Devoured, All Of Them’ their fate and the dire horror of ‘Other Woes Are Yet To Come’ a warning to those yet to take the journey and a promise to those already devoured. A quiet, dismal, ominous place with dark roiling sounds pushing out of the future towards the present.

Eighty odd minutes of truly dark, bleak music but meticulously composed and arranged and layered. It doesn’t so much hit you as rolls out, like vast oily clouds inexorably engulfing the void and the subtle folds and iridescent darkness surge and wane around the strange weak light and we see monolithic scenes that defy comprehension.

Without a doubt one of the absolute the best offerings of dark ambient I’ve heard since 2014’s Cryo Chamber Collaboration ‘Azathoth’ and Dim Light’s 2022 ‘Starspire’. If ambient is your thing, this is utterly essential, and completely enthralling.

(9.5/10 Gizmo)

https://www.facebook.com/Lustmord.Page

https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/much-unseen-is-also-here