If you love dark ambient and industrial music then you should know Lustmord. The prolific one-man project of Welsh musician Brian Williams, Lustmord has 40-plus years and innumerable albums, EPs and singles to its name. Over those years, Williams has worked with everyone from the Swans' Jarboe to sludge-mongers the Melvins. But his highest profile team-ups have to be his many collaborations with TOOL and their guitarist Adam Jones and vocalist Maynard James Keenan.
Williams is responsible for eerie, authorized remixes of "Schism" and "Parabola," and his ambient sounds can be heard on the prog-metal titans' 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum. He's worked with Keenan on multiple Puscifer releases, including "V" Is for Vagina, "V" Is for Viagra and "D" Is for Dubby: The Lustmord Dub Mixes. And both the singer and Jones have returned the favor: TOOL's guitarist contributed to Lustmord's 2008 LP, [ O T H E R ], while Keenan appears as the "the voice of Abaddon" on 2003's The Word as Power.
We recently talked to Williams about the latter album, which he selected as the best "Point of Entry" for new listeners to discover Lustmord. This discussion led organically to thoughts on his collaboration and friendship with Keenan. Read his comments below.
The Word as Power [is] more accessible than some of my other albums … It's the first album I've done that actually features vocals. … And it's also the one I like the most. For me, from a creative point of view, it's my most successful album. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I really like it myself. I've been doing this for quite a few decades now, and at that time that album … was what I always wanted to do.
It actually features Maynard James Keenan on one of the tracks, "Abaddon." I'm not too sure [when I first met him]. It would've been probably over at Adam [Jones'] place because there would be these gatherings from time to time. The extended TOOL family, a core group of us would get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas and weekend stuff. Maynard would be at some of those things. Because this was in L.A. and he'd mostly be in Arizona, but he'd be at some of them. And it must have been about 2005, 2006. To be honest with you, that's how much of an impression he made on me. [Laughs] Well, I knew who he was, obviously, because of TOOL, and we knew the same people.
After working with Maynard [for TOOL and Puscifer] and hearing his voice isolated … I knew that he would be perfect for that album of mine. Because The Word as Power was an album of vocals. So, I thought he would be perfect for it, but I wasn't going to ask him because, like, hell, he gets asked all the time for that shit and it's kind of sleazy, you know what I mean? But he came up to me one day and said, "I should do some vocals for you, because it'll be kind of a good thing." Because he knows he's a name and him being on something would get something more attention — which is why I didn't want to ask him because that would be taking advantage of the friendship. But he himself volunteered to do that because he thought that he could help.
I have huge respect for TOOL, I mean all of them, and their skill level, what they're doing, their achievements. But there is also … you can be a really good band and not succeed. You could be a shit band and do really well. But people like Maynard, he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He's had to work hard. He does work hard. This guy works like crazy. He gets his hands dirty. So, he knows what it's like. He knows if the tables were turned, he would really wish somebody would do that for him.
