The word as power review

Here’s a decidedly old-fashioned request: Listen to The Word as Power, the first-ever vocal-oriented album from dark ambient pioneer Lustmord, multiple times in short succession, as though it’s the only new album you’ll hear all month, or at least all week. Don’t just listen to it on repeat, either: Hear it in different settings— on different sound systems, in different rooms, sometimes in public places and, when possible, in private, with as few distractions as possible. If making that sort of commitment to a 75-minute album of largely wordless chants and torpid electronics doesn’t seem likely, maybe skip this one; its length and generally tectonic pace are easy targets for accusations of boredom. But if you want to live in a record and to treat every time it breathes or adjust its posture as a major event, The Word as Power is an architectural wonder— an album that feels strangely interactive and dynamic, as though its music was never meant to be final.

For more than three decades, Lustmord has been the primary outlet of Brian Williams, an electronic arranger and producer with a broad view of darkness. Williams defined Lustmord’s central and largely stable aesthetic early into the project’s discography— couch samples captured in oft-lugubrious places within foreboding sonic settings, with mile-wide craters of bass and razor-sharp veins of noise serving as the constants within alternating conceptual constructs. But as he’s refined the approach, particularly with a string of subgrene-galvanizing albums in the 90s, he’s attempted to expand its application, too. Not only has Williams pushed Lustmord’s lurch into video games and movies, he’s also invited other commanders of the bleak and heavy into Lustmord’s own slow folds. In a 2010 interview with Fact, Williams talked about how creating and listening to the music of Lustmord was a very solitary experience. “I can’t imagine anyone listens to my music at a party,” he said, understating the case. But he’s worked with Nurse With Wound and stylistic progeny Larsen. He’s contributed to albums by both Maynard James Keenan’s Tool and Puscifier. And he’s recorded with Isis’ Aaron Turner (on the great [Other], which Turner released) and with the Melvins on 2004’s Pigs of the Roman Empire, a curious collaborative full-length. If Lustmord is solitary music, it’s created surprisingly often. That’s helped keep it vital during the last 30 years.

On The Word as Power, Lustmord continues that tradition of using outside sources to build from his clear and consistent artistic base. Here, he pairs long, slow, and steady vocal takes from five singers with his usually sedate machinations of plunging bass and droning textures. The distant, near-monastic intonations of Maynard James Keenan, for instance, echo as though from the mouth of a cave on “Abbadon”, fading in and out of a punishing electronic web like they’re being whipped by a gale. He practically bullies Jarboe’s bewitching tone on “Andras Sodom”, occasionally letting it drift like smoke above a fire only to soon scramble, reverse or otherwise warp it.

«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.

Buy at iTunes | Buy at Insound (vinyl)

Speak the words “dark ambient,” and those who have any idea what you’re talking about will likely make an immediate association with Brian Williams, the British producer and innovator behind Lustmord. After launching Lustmord in 1980, Williams has taken his ominous, dense and scary-as-fuck sounds into strange and amusing adventures over the past three decades. Even before Matthew Herbert recorded the life and death of a pig, Williams recorded music in slaughterhouses and crypts. He’s collaborated with Tool and released a full-length collaborative album with The Melvins, as well as having worked with any number of industrial music pioneers, including SPK, of which he was a member. And despite being an atheist, he performed as part of the high mass observance of the Church of Satan.

Despite Williams’ many collaborations over the years, throughout his solo output, one won’t find much in the way of vocals, other than the occasional Tuvan throat singer — his sound is more about an ethereal sort of dread that doesn’t lend itself well to the sound of an individual vocalist. But that changes on new album The Word As Power. The clue to the shift is in the title, which pretty clearly prepares the listener for an album of awe-inspiring, if still quite unsettling vocal tracks. Williams has paired with a list of notable vocalists in the dark musical arts, including Aina Skinnes Olsen, Soriah, friend and Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan, and First Lady of Avant Garde Noise Rock, Jarboe.

Williams’ selection of vocalists is key to The Word As Power. As cool as it might be to hear some black metal singer screech his way through some of these harrowing, lengthy pieces, they take on a more mystical, spiritual tone, and someone like Jarboe is better able to convey that than a corpse-painted ghoul (though Atilla Csihar could probably pull it off). Yet the identity of the vocalists is hardly important, here. They become part of the atmosphere, players in a consuming whole that feels altogether otherworldly and awe-inspiring, and, as expected, often scary as fuck. And yet, there’s a soothing, meditative quality to a track like “Goetia,” which hums in hypnotic drones. Meanwhile, “Chorazin” and “Grigori” come across like medieval chants, relics from a long-forgotten era that predates Ableton. That’s a key component of all of Lustmord’s music, actually, in spite of whatever technology ables him to continue to create such strange and darkly beautiful music. His is not the sound of electronics so much as the sound of spirits being channeled through them.

Similar Albums:
The Haxan Cloak – Excavation
Prurient – Bermuda Drain
Sunn0))) – Monoliths and Dimensions

Sign-up for our newsletter!

Stay up to date on the latest news, reviews, interviews and more.

Yes, I would like to sign up

Available on: Blackest Ever Black LP

Renowned as one of the pioneers of the dark ambient genre, Lustmord’s latest album is essentially a piece for chamber choir and electronics. It also features a stellar line-up, that chamber choir consisting of ex-Swans frontwoman Jarboe, Maynard James Keenan of Tool, and Soriah, an American specialist in Khöömei, Tuvan throat singing, alongside soloist Aina Skinnes Olsen.

Khöömei is founded on drones and nasal overtones, a reverential, abstract imitation of the sounds of nature – animals, wind and water – neatly complimenting Lustmord’s own drones, field recordings and cavernous use of reverb. This technique is arranged with other complimentary deliveries from the chorus; wide-throated utterances, mid-range wails, subtle, animalistic contortions and Gregorian-like sombre intonation. You’d never be able to identify the singers were it not for the release notes.

These voices, sitting at the peak of Lustmord’s subtle interactions of reverb-drenched sound layers – sub-sonic grinding, glacial explosions, resonating reverb tails, rumbling collapses – hover in the stereo space. It’s a ball of parts floating above an abyss, a steady suction from below causing it to slowly tumble and revolve. At 74 minutes long and barely straying from this idea, it is typically immersive dark ambience, and a thought-provoking listen for those who wish to lose themselves.

At certain moments the overpowering reverb dips close to cliché, but the one aspect that really tips The Word As Power into overwrought is the prominent lead vocal lines of Arabesque melodies and more overt overtone solos. Not the parts themselves, as they are beautiful – Olsen’s performance as alto soloist is excellent, as is Soria’s – but the inclusion of regional identifiers like these splice the music’s ambiguity in two.

Maybe I’m just wary of a certain listenership looking for the next step in dull, controversial catharsis – a more cynical version of this, if you like – tied up in the doomy, Satanic, man’s-inhumanity-to-man themes prevalent in so much of the noise/drone/techno/power electronics/metal scene. However, I think Lustmord is genuine, more like Dante or Milton, exploring the idea of an ancient ‘truth’ in a more contemporary setting.

Identifiers aside, what’s most relatable about The Word as Power is a similarity to something Autechre mentioned in an old interview; a desire to reach ‘Year Zero’ of music via their technologies. There’s definitely an ancient, unformed quality here, and it results in some of Lustmord’s most inspiring work to date.

One of the most famous problems in medieval theology was the question of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Scholars produced a multitude of answers, and the question itself became emblematic of the trivialities that concerned the theologists, so much so that even today critics use it to malign chatter they find pointless or exhausting. But it strikes me that the theologists were looking for angels in all the wrong places. Why would an angel deign to shrink to such minimal size?

In Genesis, and the apocryphal Book of Enoch, the offspring of humans and the fallen angels were giants, and the fallen angels themselves (called Grigori in one text) stood at unfathomable heights. It’s said in Kabbalah lore that if the angel Sandalphon’s feet touched the earth, his head would reach all the way to heaven. What would the voice of such a power sound like? Are the classical composers and New Agers also wrong in their attribution of the high registers to the angelic voice? Of course, there are different orders of angels, some not even human in appearance, and only infinity can limit the power of the highest beings (thus, the origin of the question above: just how limited are their powers over the physical world?), so some angels can make any sound they like. But the angel with the legs as large as pillars in the Revelation spoke with the sound of thunder. It’s the sublime voice of the fallen angels that Lustmord attempts to capture on The Word As Power, using a human voice to invoke and unite with these beings.

The low end on The Word As Power is so deep that many speakers won’t be able to do it justice. In fact, it’s often difficult to tell just how deep it goes, even on good headphones or with a decent sub. Because these compositions exist on two frequency layers, the foregrounded vocals often eclipse the deep bass tones in intelligibility. Layers and layers of reverb also muddle the mixture, but then again, perhaps those depths are not meant for easy parsing. If the abyss were to speak, its language wouldn’t be accessible to human faculties. Even the vocal elements of The Word As Power feel beyond supra-linguistic, as if emerging directly out of the soul of the singer. On “Goetia,” the vocals take on the qualities of ritual utterance, its title referring to the art of calling demonic or angelic beings into the world. “Chorazin” follows, it’s vocal repeating in a formless chant.

As they spin their six-winged bodies about the throne of God, the seraphs endlessly chant the words Holy, Holy, Holy. This is the only action they commit themselves to, even as the highest order of angels. It’s a prayer, not of supplication in hopes of making a personal request, but of recognition, perhaps even blind terror. The word itself is empty, but in its chanting, it continually transforms the singer into a purer vessel, filling the utterance with divine power. But what do the fallen seraphs sing from the deepest reaches of the bottomless pit? This album distinguishes not between holy and unholy but rather the sacred from the profane. From the very beginning of The Word As Power, Lustmord’s tone never drops from solemn reverence, and the vocals never lose the power of sacred speech. This mood suffuses the field recordings and synth textures that lurk beneath the surface, transforming what to some ears might seem featureless ambience into the voices of angelic or demonic choirs, rumbling in the depths of the chasm or the black folds of an approaching thunderhead. Occasionally, ghostly voices issue from the background, joining the vocalist in a seance.

The second half of the album features throat-singing, itself dual-layered, with a resonating bass core and a whistling high harmonic. It’s as if at “Grigori” the vocals have subsumed the double voice of the previous pieces, birthed like a giant from a human mother and a gigantic fallen father. The background textures become percussive, like the massive steps of Behemoth across the Earth’s tectonic plates. It’s when the vocals meld into the morass of ambient texture, relentless footsteps, and gong beats that each track on this album reaches its climax. The voice of the invoked beings seems to possess the vocalist, finally achieving the desired union. There is a kind of simplicity to this structure, such that the performative elements of the vocals are but a shadow play, there to contrast and slowly transform the other sound sources into something intelligible; but this dialectic is the pivot on which The Word As Power turns. It’s the performance of a ritual in various stages that bring the presence of sacred beings into contact with the invoker’s soul. The ultimate danger and ultimate goal are the same: to be devoured by the thundering voice, drowned in awe. “Every angel is terrifying,” Rilke said.

The Word As Power might only have one trick, but it’s one that resonates deeply. Even without the theological and occult sediments encrusting this album, the enveloping walls of sound can strike fear into the heart of any listener. This is not a horror-styled fun fear, but the species of dread that results from realizing that one is incredibly small and insignificant in the face of the vast forces that animate our universe. That which dwarfs us can by its very presence destroy us, and yet it allows us to live, for a time. It’s the presence of the human that marks The Word As Power out from much of the rest of Lustmord’s catalog. Even though we as pitiful wretches seek to be crushed by the powers we invoke, their disdain to destroy us empowers us: that which does not kill us makes us stronger.

More about: Lustmord

Lustmord

As Lustmord Brian Williams has created a strain of industrial and dark ambient music that creeps along like a horror soundtrack one minute, then slowly, surely, it opens itself up – unfolding – to reveal the beauty (and still the darkness) of sublime classical music, of minimalism, of – well, I’ll say it – “world music”.

Here with The Word As Power Lustmord focuses on vocals – the word being most powerful when in fact wordless. Here chants and throat singing infuse the quiet electronics and creeping synth templates that this master of mood so effortlessly conjures.

I’ve heard plenty of other material from Lustmord but this – his first foray into vocals, in this way – is the most powerful, the most moving. It’s a record that has me caught in its hypnotic, slow-moving sway.

This album is a huge commitment, a slow, deliberate sound-world built up over 75 minutes. It requires you listen to it, perhaps through headphones, certainly sitting down, doing little else. It’s a spiritual experience – a meditation. The closest touchstone I have to offer is if you imagine Dead Can Dance reworking Gorecki’s “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”. Hackneyed though that may be, it certainly helped me to digest this experience, to process and contextualise what was going on.

Or think of Burial reworking the Philip Glass scores for Nagoyqatsi, Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi – perhaps reworking them and layering all three across one another.

This is beat-less but in the slow-moving intensity it’s deeply beautiful. Thanks to the vocals of Aina Skinnes Olsen in particular, giving a hint of Lisa Gerrard and the Trans Global Underground sound; other vocalists include Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and Jarboe formerly of Swans.

If you found the big-serve albums from Swans and Scott Walker last year, The Seer and Bisch-Bosch respectively, to be the sort of hard work that was so thoroughly rewarding to the point of seeming spiritually redemptive, rejuvenating then you’ve come to the right place.

If you’ve been moved by Lustmord’s Heresy and Stalker albums in particular then you’ll find this deep emersion rewarding, absorbing.

Post-apocalyptic, post-rave comedown it may be, for some. But it’s the most amazing experience I’ve had inside headphones in months. It’s barely an album, more an aural sculpture, a scripture, a block of sound design – walk around town with it and be your own installation. A walking soundtrack.

The Word As Power is one of the best new musical experiences I’ve had this year.

Top reviews from other countries