A Spark of Times of Old

Whatever Nachtzeit's ambient black metal project Lustre lacks in originality and variety, it makes up for in consistency and predictability. This one-track EP might well be the first, middle and last word in glacially slow and monotonous atmospheric BM repetition. Set against a continuously repeating melody loop, high-pitched tremolo guitar trills away and analog synths replicating the sounds of an orchestra take their time bouncing off listless percussion in slow motion grace. Slurping reptilian vocal dipping in and out in the far distant firmament completes the picture. As the music steadily picks its way through a straight path to its goal, wherever that is, coldspace synth melody plays overhead and dicky faux piano dink-dinks alongside, like a lethargic ambient BM version of Spike the bulldog and his terrier pal Chester looking for cats to beat up in old Warner Bros cartoons.

Unless you really, really love this style of predictable comfort blackened ambient music, you'll probably find this piece as ho-hum soporific as I did. It sounds like an over-extended introduction stuck on auto-play to a much bigger music soundtrack. Even by its own standards, this music quickly turns stale and not a little cheesy. The lyrics don't provide much more than a banal observation about past times long gone and the memory of them sometimes triggered by the most insignificant and unlikely object or incident.