Lustmord
Purifying Fire

Feeling emotions in front of a dark ambient album is often a daunting task, comparable to the courage needed to dive headfirst into a sea as black as pitch and as deep as the universe itself. You can't expect anything predictable from this genre, especially when dealing with an artist of Lustmord's caliber and his various masterpieces, particularly this mammoth "Purifying Fire".

What is Lustmord's music? First of all, it is not exactly music since in 90% of cases what his albums exude is only pure and dark electronic, clear and crystalline yet foreign to any melodic form; and yet despite the relative absence of a constant melodic line, the emotions and especially the atmospheres that seep from these sounds freeze the listener in an ecstatic cryogenic slumber.

"Strange Attractor". Never a more appropriate title for an opening track constructed in such a way as to intrigue the unwary in the first few minutes with sparkling and playful drops of oneiric ether that peek out from the black canvas of a sidereal painting. A strange way to entice the spectator who, before you know it, will be caught in a whirlpool of spectral sounds in constant and inexorable development, until fear is skillfully blended with wonder and amazement with the silent arrival of shimmering and almost imperceptible sound effects, creating a mix of atmospheres that cannot fail to recall the immensity of the galaxy, its lights, its shadows, its void, the incessant and perfect movement of celestial bodies perpetuated by who knows what force.

Seeing through Lustmord's art is precisely this: it is not just about simple noises and/or electronics, but the music of the silent void. It's not the melody factor that counts, but the astral shard that resides in the mind of the listener.

And so it will continue with "Deep Calls To Deep", made alive and poignant with its puffs of lunar dust and with that contour of distinctly melodic sounds but only hinted at, hidden by an oceanic expanse of dilated and arcane effects, while with "Deep Calls To Dub", a decidedly more visceral and raw track, subdued and vibrant electronics will orchestrate light and shadow with a harmony as cold and distant as Pluto but as threatening as a sword of Damocles, even more so with the arrival of disquieting, majestic, and chilling choirs.

A threat that will take shape with the twilight and apocalyptic "Black Star": velvety and creeping gusts will descend heavily like a shroud on the scene of the track and a Tibetan horn accompanied by distorted growls will make it even more solemn and silently destructive. In all its 15 minutes of length, "Black Star" will evoke colorless landscapes of dead fields furrowed by a sky without an arch. Flashes of melancholic and claustrophobic melody will come into play with "Permafrost", which plays with the listener's more emotional side thanks to the inclusion of strings with a dirty, dry, and musty sound, making this episode one of the most peculiar and experimental on the album. Sounds now mechanical, now soft, now corrosive and annihilating... Who wouldn't fall into this abysmal limbo?

I could continue to describe what remains of this "Purifying Fire" but I would end up doubling the length of this already tedious review, which unfortunately is much more emotion-focused than technical-analytical; however, it cannot be otherwise, given that the genre in question is extremely abstract both in technique (simple and monolithic) and in its ramifications. An album to be listened to with a clear mind and with a lot of, a lot of patience. Maybe even at night.