Lussuria / Alberich - Borgia LP

Label: Hospital Productions

Our Review:

Borgia is the first collaboration between Lussuria and Alberich, and is much greater than the sum of its parts. These two artists are regulars for Hospital Productions - the powerhouse label of brutality through sound as curated by Dominick "Prurient" Fernow. Both Lussuria (aka Jim Mroz) and Alberich (aka Kris Lapke) are New York based death-industrial projects, with Lusurria hedging towards the visceral gloom of Atrax Morgue and Alberich taking a heavier, rhythmic approach. In 2016, Hospital issued the a very tiny pressing of cassettes for these recordings as a bonus offering to those who purchased the 20xCD Skin Crime boxset directly from the label; and now Borgia receives a proper, stand-alone edition on vinyl.

A heavy, oppressive fog permeates Borgia's dark ambient passages in tracing a topography of anxiety and dread. Much of the work embraces a sound design of sustained tension as previously authored by Inade and Lustmord, with locomotive rhythms punctuating these uncannily bleak manifestations of end-time atmospherics. "Alabaster" gravitates to the hypnotic sequences and theatrical gloom that's often found in the glacial electronics from Varg as well as much of Fernow's imperial, post-noise explorations from his late-period works.