Lustre – A Glimpse of Glory (2010)

Hailing from Sweden, Lustre (one man band) brings us his second full-length release with “A Glimpse of Glory”. Mixing Ambient elements with the raw beauty of Atmospheric Black Metal, we get a very solid release that instantly became one of our top 10 releases of 2010 so far. During the 40 minutes of “A Glimpse of Glory”, Lustre reminded us of bands such as Enid, Blut aus Nord, Velvet Cacoon, etc. combined with the ethereal nature of artists like raison d'être and Robert Rich.

Each of the three tracks found in “A Glimpse of Glory” focuses more in creating a very enthralling atmosphere than on the ‘Black Metal’ aspect of things. There are distorted guitars through most of the album (two thirds maybe), but there is only a little section (on track one) that has harsh BM screams. We didn’t even care if anybody was singing since each song crafts a mysterious atmosphere that gave us chills while listening to them at night.

With a very minimalistic approach to things, Lustre has written three superbly arranged tracks that do not rely on any gimmicks to grab the listener’s attention. Each song has its own emotional path that will transport you to a different place just after a few minutes of listening to the song. We love how the keyboards give a very epic and even glorious sound to the music while remaining simple, and not sounding like wedding music.

The ambiance of bands like Enid and raison d'être is prevalent through the album, and if you’ve heard any of these bands, you know it’s a very difficult thing to explain. We greatly enjoy that this album is an easy listen, and it’s not full of screams or a ridiculously raw sounding production. We think that sometimes a band can transfer more emotions by just letting the music speak for it self, and Lustre has done a great job by keeping “A Glimpse of Glory” very simple and direct.

If you are into Ambient with some distorted guitars and some Black Metal elements, your ears will greatly appreciate you for getting “A Glimpse of Glory”. If you are expecting something more brutal or fast-paces, we recommend you look somewhere else for this.

Release: September 20th, 2010

Country: Sweden