Lustmord
Heresy

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was corrupted and dismembered by Lustmord so that Chaos might explode from the bowels of the Earth and Music might become the antithesis and Summa Divisio.

Many times I have tried to define Lustmord, or at least his way of conceiving what people usually call music. The problem, however, is that his is not music tout court: better to consider it as an arcane manifestation of darkness in all its forms, whether distant and sidereal, or cramped and creeping, yet grave and submarine.

Lustmord is the encyclopedia of darkness and “Heresy” (1990), his second studio work, is the key to understanding every (master)piece to come, and more. In my inability to define this man (if he is one), therefore, I leave the word to “Heresy”.

Leaving aside at this point the details on the singular and atypical “Paradise Disowned” (1984), the first studio album that I will probably review, the album in question encapsulates one hundred percent the power of Brian Williams: it is in a nutshell the quintessence of his art, because it anticipates and at the same time concentrates the characteristics of all subsequent chapters, which are nothing more than its cursed progeny.

“Heresy” is the complete puzzle, the perfect and immaculate picture that Lustmord then dismantled piece by piece over time in his subsequent albums, separating each characteristic from the whole to give it a new vitality and autonomy from the rest of his work.

It would be enough to take albums like “Carbon/Core”, “Purifying Fire”, “Juggernaut”, “OTHER” (in short, all the others) and mix them to get “Heresy”: the result is an extraordinary shapeshifting primordial broth that shakes silently, calms down and thrashes, roars and then silences, and again seethes quietly like an enraged volcano. In the shadow of a wounded and sick sky, this incandescent magma crawls slowly, corroding every obstacle with primitive and bestial ferocity. And there will be no escape for anyone.

This is what makes “Heresy” unique compared to all the other episodes, namely the fact that it lacks the artificial perfection that many future albums, devised and chiseled with inhuman precision, will master. “Heresy” is none of that: it shapes and evolves on its own, instinctive and wild, grows unpredictably and entwines without schemes, it is monstrous, it is twisted, it is wicked; it's frightening. It is the epitome of universal darkness and horror.

It is useless to try to study it in detail, as “Heresy” is one seamless suite of over an hour divided into six nameless episodes, which do little more than attempt to split into unnecessary 'paragraphs' a behemoth that knows no order and should be experienced with no point of reference, plunging headlong into the abyss. From the first to the last minute, Lustmord lets the music construct itself and embody not his ideas, but himself. Because “Heresy” IS Lustmord, his demonic shadow in all its greatness. All the rest does not exist.

The Word fell silent, the shadow grasped the light and strangled it, disorder and harmony melted into one another, ash and lapilli rained from a crimson red sky, a searing silence froze everything. And the jaws of the Earth opened wide in a timeless scream.