Industrial icon Lustmord unveils latest full-length album, 'Much Unseen Is Also Here'

Dark ambient pioneer Lustmord has pierced the veil once more with ‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’. The artist’s latest, solo full-length release in a formidable, 40-year creative career at the forefront of industrial music is out today via Berlin’s Pelagic Records.

Urged by Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle to make music that captured his distinctive aura, Brian Williams assumed the mantle of Lustmord in 1980 and began working with sound because the music he wanted to listen to simply didn’t exist. Nine years of field-recording experimentation and near-constant collaboration later, Lustmord released his third album, ‘Heresy’, which became a milestone in the industrial scene and is now universally regarded as the origin of the dark ambient genre.

35 years later, ‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’ continues the legacy established by ‘Heresy’ and echoes its enthralling narrative arc. Sequenced in three distinct parts; ‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’ is meant to be listened to in a single, uninterrupted sitting; transporting listeners away to an uncompromising parallel world that only exists within the music, before casting them back out at the end, forever changed.

A harrowing glimpse into the album’s third and final act, ‘Other Woes Are Yet To Come’ is an airy, eerie marriage of reedy woodwind refrain and Lustmord’s inimitable cavernous reverb that builds and builds until one final, bone-shaking toll forces us to make a difficult decision; do we reach in hope for the light or delver ever deeper into the dark?

This sense of trepidation and the terrifying unknown is an important and recurring theme within Lustmord’s work. “I chose to let the sound talk for me” says Brian. “My music is not meant to be explained - only listened to as a means of exposing the sheer insignificance of our primitive thoughts and actions within the vast scale of the cosmos - a scale which we as a species are ill equipped to comprehend.”

It should come as no surprise that the captivating narrative precedent set by ‘Heresy’ has also been the catalyst for an incredible career in production work and sound design. Alongside a plethora of solo albums as Lustmord, Williams has worked with artists and outfits including Tool, Isis, Jarboe, Coil’s John Balance, SWANS, Mortiis and Melvins; with his most recent release, 2021’s ‘Alter’, being a collaborative record with award-winning singer-songwriter, Årabrot member and fellow Pelagic artist, Karin Park.

Based in L.A. since 1993, Lustmord has also contributed as composer and sound designer to the music for iconic film and television properties including ‘The Crow’, ‘Strange Days’, ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, ‘Underworld’ and more recently, FX’s ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ series and ‘Taxi Driver’ writer Paul Schrader’s 2017 film ‘First Reformed.’

Still determined to push at the boundaries of sound, genre and media; Lustmord has also contributed to the soundscapes of video games such as Assassin’s Creed, League of Legends and, quite fittingly, 2022’s H.R. Geiger-inspired, survival-horror game, Scorn.

With so many strings to his bow already and even more collaborations in the works, ‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’ serves as both a retrospective gateway to Lustmord’s groundbreaking dark ambient origins as well as a tantalising taste of what Williams is capable of now; what is still yet to come.

‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’ is out now.

Brian Williams on Lustmord:

“I try to create music that is timeless, not tied to a specific period or style and which sounds as different and original the first time it’s heard as it does the last. I very deliberately try to tap into a primal energy and a sense of place. Some people tend to consider the results dark, but I disagree. I believe that response speaks more of them than my music; I consider it deep, as it was always meant to be...”