Lustmord

Lustmord worked across composer, sound designer, film score composer, writer and secondary school teacher and 1 further recorded occupations. The registers place that work in dark ambient. This article rests on 49 catalogued compositions, 61 issued recordings and 19 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

• Background — person • Name — Lustmord • Landscape — yes • Birth Name — Brian Williams • Alias — * Isolrubin BK • Arecibo • Dread • Origin — North Wales • Instrument — * Synthesizer • programming • Genre — * Dark ambient • industrial • Occupation — Musician • Years Active — 1980–present • Label — * Hydra Head • Soleilmoon • Past Member Of — * TGT • Terror Against Terror • Website — lustmord.com

Williams was raised in the Welsh town of Bethesda, Gwynedd, in a working-class family. He moved to London, living in a Lambeth squat. There, he befriended Throbbing Gristle members Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter, who urged him to make his own music.

Williams began releasing records as Lustmord with a self-titled debut (as "Lustmørd") in 1980. The name in German translates as "lust murder" and alludes to a painting tradition in Weimar-era Germany, in which artists like Otto Dix and George Grosz painted scenes of rape and mutilated female bodies that captured the amorality of the interwar period. Lustmord's second album, Paradise Disowned, came out in 1986. Critics and Williams himself considered his third Lustmord album, 1990's Heresy, to be his breakthrough work. Williams has attributed Heresy 's success to his use of an Atari computer as a digital audio workstation. In retrospectives of Lustmord's work and the dark ambient genre, critics have called Heresy a milestone. In 1995, he collaborated with the American ambient musician Robert Rich on the critically acclaimed album Stalker. His 2008 record [[Other (Lustmord album)|[O T H E R]]] features guest appearances by Adam Jones (Tool), King Buzzo (Melvins), and Aaron Turner (Isis). Lustmord has worked with the progressive metal band Tool since the early 2000s, notably on remixes of their 2001 singles "Schism" and "Parabola", which were published in December 2005. He also contributed to the band's 2006 album, 10,000 Days, with the atmospheric storm sounds on the title track. He later worked with Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan, collaborating on his project Puscifer's 2007 debut album, "V" is for Vagina, as well as providing several remixes for "V" is for Viagra. The Remixes (2008). Lustmord eventually generated a collection of dub remixes of several tracks from "V" is for Vagina, known as "D" Is for Dubby – The Lustmord Dub Mixes, also released in 2008. He worked with Tool again in 2019, providing the ocean and wave sound effects on the track "Descending", from their album Fear Inoculum. Lustmord has extracted field recordings made in crypts, caves, and slaughterhouses, and combined them with occasional ritualistic incantations and Tibetan horns. His treatments of acoustic phenomena encased in digitally expanded bass rumbles have a dark-ambient quality.

Around 1999, Interplay Entertainment hired Williams to create the musical score for the video game Planescape: Torment. He worked on the project for four months, writing over 40 original pieces. However, just six weeks before the game was released, one of the producers had a change of heart on the game's musical direction, and Williams's compositions went unused. His first time working on a video game project, Williams considered the experience "terrible", eventually reusing some of the elements from the score in his 2001 album, Metavoid. He has since provided music and sound design for a variety of other projects, including Far Cry Instincts (2005). In 2015, he composed the soundtrack for Evolve with Jason Graves, and in 2022, he wrote the score to the horror game Scorn, alongside Aethek.

In the early 1990s, Williams relocated to California from London. He is an atheist.

• Year — Title — Label • 1981 — Lustmørd — Sterile Records SR 3 • 1986 — Paradise Disowned — Soleilmoon • 1990 — Heresy — Soleilmoon • 1991 — A Document of Early Acoustic & Tactical Experimentation • 1992 — The Monstrous Soul — Soleilmoon • 1994 — The Place Where the Black Stars Hang — Soleilmoon • 1995 — Stalker (with Robert Rich) — Fathom/Hearts of Space • 1997 — Lustmord vs. Metal Beast (with Shad Scott) • 2001 — Metavoid — Nextera • 2002 — Law of the Battle of Conquest (EP, with Hecate) • Zoetrope — Nextera • 2004 — Carbon/Core • Pigs of the Roman Empire (with Melvins) — Ipecac • 2007 — Juggernaut (with King Buzzo) • 2008 — [[O T H E R|[O T H E R]]] • 2013 — The Word as Power • 2016 — Dark Matter • 2020 — Trinity • The Fall (Dennis Johnson's November Deconstructed) (EP, with Nicolas Horvath) — Sub Rosa • 2021 — Alter (with Karin Park) — Pelagic Records • 2024 — Much Unseen Is Also Here • 2026 — The Pulse of Atoms (with Dave Lombardo) — Ipecac • Remix albums • 2008 — "D" is for Dubby – The Lustmord Dub Mixes (by Puscifer) • 2009 — [THE DARK PLACES OF THE EARTH] • 2009 — [T R A N S M U T E D] • 2009 — [B E Y O N D] • 2009 — [O T H E R D U B] • 2010 — Heretic • 2015 — Vampillia Meets Lustmord (with Vampilia) • Live albums • 1982 — Lustmordekay — Sterile Records cassette SRC 6 • 2006 — Rising (06.06.06) • 2013 — Kraków (October 22 2010) • 2014 — Stockholm (January 15 2011) • 2017 — Hobart (June 12 2011) • 2017 — Maschinenfest (October 2 2011) • 2020 — Lublin (December 10 2016) • 2020 — Berlin (March 25 2018) • 2025 — New York 2011 • Soundtracks • 2017 — First Reformed • 2020 — The Empty Man • 2022 — Scorn (with Aethek) • Compilations • 2000 — Purifying Fire — Soleilmoon • 2011 — Songs of Gods and Demons • 2013 — Things That Were • 2022 — The Others — Pelagic Records • Appearances • 1986 — Vhutemas Arechetypi ("Mass", "Permafrost")

• White Stains (1990)

• Psychological Warfare Technology Systems (1992)

• Crash Injury Trauma (1993)

• Trans Plutonian Transmissions (1994)

• In Dub (2017)

Lustmord worked as composer, sound designer, film score composer and writer, and the authority record catalogues a further 2 occupations under the same name, among them secondary school teacher and musician. Active from 1980. The fields Lustmord worked in include dark ambient. Lustmord played the keyboard instrument. Lustmord worked in English.