hearthedungeons - Tumblr blog

[hearthedungeons]

Rectory - Ghost Stories and Giallo

While both EPs from this album are certainly distinct, they are short enough that it feels fair to cover them both in the same review.

“Ghost Stories” was Rectory’s debut from last June, and it is an extremely strong introduction to the project. Opener “The Screaming Woods” starts with a deep drone, while a vocal-like synth fades in, harmonic elements in D minor bubble up from elsewhere in the mix, and echoed chords cut through the texture. It feels like a proper intro, setting the stage and slowly bringing in elements that enhance the scene. There’s a bit of timing-related chaos here but it’s controlled enough that it adds to a sense of anxiety rather than distracting from the proceedings. “Waking at Midnight” begins with a single percussive strike, then barely perceptible crawling ambience creeps in afterward, building into a faint drone. Another strike follows almost 40 seconds later, and the drone becomes a distinct note. Yet another long interval elapses before a third strike of the percussion creeps in, foreshadowed with high shrieking noises, and followed with some sampled speech. This is audio horror of the highest order, demonstrating the artist’s ability at sound design as much as composition, and truly an unsettling headphone listen after dark. We get a simple four note melody, accompanied by a chord, as the percussive strikes continue, signifying the distillation of a ghostly presence into a visible entity. As the track continues, the entity becomes more hostile, more aggressive, demanding to be perceived, to be feared.

The third track, and the shortest here, “Urban exploration”, feels the most song-like, with numerous melodic elements. I would have liked this track to develop a bit more, but regardless it is well constructed and serves as a palette cleanser between two longer tracks. The final track here, “This Room Always Feels so Sad”, begins with a nice music-box style melody, full of nostalgia, while low distant synth pads add some texture. There’s more sound design, sounding like something crackling or scratching - it sounds tense, but not exactly placeable. This track in particular feels like the most natural marriage of composition and sound design, a fitting conclusion to an album that makes effective use of both, but definitely leans heavily on the sound design in a way that pushes it toward dark ambient territory at times.

The patience of this music, the prevalence of sound design in terms of making it a theatrical or narrative experience, the fact that it feels like a distinctly modern take on gothic supernatural horror, may be a turnoff for some dungeon synth listeners. Horror and DS do in fact dovetail pretty neatly at times, but many listeners are so attached to melody and medieval atmosphere, and I can see some of those listeners not appreciating the work here. But horror is clearly a drive for this project, evidenced by this artist using the title “Giallo” for the next release.

The use of this title is admittedly confusing. I know Giallo as a genre to be more focused on crime, less on the supernatural - yet judging from the song titles here (as well as the previous work), Rectory tells stories of hauntings. The answer is of course in the soundtracks - this is a distinct nod to the synth scores of Goblin and Fabio Frizzi, but using that language to spin a story of a haunting. The potential problem here is that these synth scores have much more of a prominent influence on synthwave than they do on Dungeon synth. There’s a likelihood that a DS purist would get to the drum machine and arpeggiator driven section on album opener “The Occupant” and think, ‘this release is mislabeled’, and probably not continue.

While I don’t think this release is overall as strong as the debut, the remainder of this album definitely feels more relevant to DS than the opener suggests. The second track, “There are Eyes in the Basement”, utilizes a simple loop in high synths, with some ghostly counter melodies and mono-synth bass. Bits of percussion and sound effects fade in and around and drive the piece along. I would’ve liked to hear more musical evolution here, maybe even just passing some of the melodic ideas around to different synth patches, but there’s one particularly stunning kind of ‘foley breakdown’ in the middle of this track that was a pretty jawdropping moment, and made me glad I was listening on headphones. The middle track “EVP” utilizes a lengthy sample from a YouTube horror series, and indicates an attempt at communication with a ghostly entity. As with the recently reviewed Lurk album, I find that the artist’s attempt at directing the narrative means that it would be difficult to put this music on as a soundtrack to reading or gaming - but it does reward closer listening in that regard.

The two final tracks “Never Sleep Again” and “The House Chose to Destroy Itself” demonstrate more of a purely musical focus, and one segues into the other almost seamlessly. I’m particularly fond of the mono-synth freakout in the final track. But while the narrative and sound design elements are clear here, via sound design and song titles, I find the musical elements a little less assured, the execution more tentative. Judging from the few singles Rectory has released in between “Ghost Stories” and the present album, this release seems like a bit of a diversion - a welcome experiment that will hopefully provide the groundwork for some future innovation, but ultimately overshadowed by the considerable strength of the debut.

[hearthedungeons]

I am pleased to report that since this review, the artist has returned to the scene, crafting some great new music and reissuing some remastered audio from these classic releases. On the off chance this review helped convince anyone to listen, please do so at the artist's bandcamp link, instead of via YouTube, and consider purchasing from the artist directly, instead of downloading a crackly old bootleg.

So, it’s come to this. After a long absence where I’ve continued to listen to DS but have found my relationship to it change almost weekly, I’m coming back, one baby step at a time. Previously, I’ve only focused on current projects which are incidentally mostly hosted on bandcamp. Generally bandcamp seems like a better thing for artists tit-for-tat, but focusing in this way cuts off a great portion of the old school releases which are out of print and so far only hosted via tape rips on YouTube or various back-corner download blogs. But my desire to write about some old school material and really understand it a little better has overcome my distaste for YouTube as a listening platform, so here we are.

Arcana Liturgia is, best I can tell, an Italian project. As with the earliest examples of any genre, it always takes ones head a moment to adjust to hearing a compressed tape rip when you’re used to cleaner digital sound. Over 5 tracks with a pretty wide range of compositional styles, we get some kind of story that isn’t 100% clear, but the variation of moods and thoughtful sequence makes this short release fly by. 

The first track begins with some softly howling wind, with a two-note timpani pattern locking in throughout the track, soon joined by a melody in a choir pad and then a melancholic wind sound. It’s a good example of old school minimalism with full atmosphere and also an economy of musical ideas in effect. The next track is almost shockingly major-key as a follow up - in another life, this would be a doo-wop chord progression no joke - but with sensitive instrumentation alternating piano and choir atmosphere, and a more anxious string melody, this very quickly worms its way under your skin. It’s made even more with the following minor key section, which adds a bit of percussion, adding some more angst, followed by the possibility of hope. Compositionally, this is kind of reminding me of Erang, in terms of having sometimes-unexpected chord progressions and sticking to them pretty rigorously. Listening to this on youtube, you could easily mistake the closing section of this track for an entirely different piece, but it is super effective. It feels almost like jumping into the middle of the action - it’s a fairly tense chord progression, and the use of what sounds like tremolo string patches as a high melody (in addition to some plucky sounding counter melody adding momentum to the plodding drum and sustained choir sounds) really adds some anxiety. It also feels the most like a JRPG track in composition. Hard to say if an Italian artist in the mid 90s would be as likely to have played those games, but regardless, it really works here. At times you could imagine it as a hypnotic black metal progression. 

The Third track continues this feel, adding a driving rhythm and some more sinister sounding melodic work. This feels very much like a PC game soundtrack. It stays pretty locked in with a percussive low-string pulse driving it most of the way, until the final minute, which introduces a very well composed, shrill wind melody with some nice syncopation and introduces some nice percussion. Given this and the fourth track, though, it feels as though the quest is not going very well - this one features stuff that could almost pass for metal riffing, with a very severe piano sound backed up by some ghostly choir pads and a driving percussion element underneath. Once again this track features an outro that feels almost like it could be another track, in a different key, serving as a more melancholic conclusion to the build of the earlier section. One of the things i like most about Old School stuff is how abrupt some of the transitions or fades are, presumably as a result of limitations on 4-track recording, and it’s something that is pretty rare in contemporary DS, where the structures of everything generally sound a lot cleaner. Composers take note!

The final track is a piano dirge in a minor key, slowly adding a harpsichord and then flute melody in the second and third repetitions. Focusing on two chords, this seems a fitting outro, although it doesn’t have the dynamism of the previou tracks. Based on what I can guess from the latin, this quest has probably ended in death. This demo is a great way to capture a dark storyline without a singularly bleak mood, and a fine example of the simplicity and directness possible in DS.

[hearthedungeons]

Thanks to 300 of you

for following this blog.

Thanks to however many more of you read it but can't deal with Tumblr as a platform.

[hearthedungeons]

These three short demos, none of which come in any longer than 15 minutes, represent the start of a very promising project which address the period of history in which Vikings occupied England. These tracks share a similar language, which seems to clearly represent the more jaunty "medieval ambient" sound of Fief that has been so widely imitated in the last several years - but with some unique touches that make the music stand out.

The 4 short tracks of the first demo are distinguished with the syncopation of their melodies. While harmonically very traditional, the music moves along with lots of simmering energy due to the way melodic lines weave around the beat. The standout here is "The Fall of Bloodaxe", which demonstrates a great fusion of the energy of this lighter, more video-game inspired sound with the more traditional 'distant battlefield' atmospheres of old school DS, with some percussion sneaking in to clarify the imagery as this track progresses. A quality first effort, although barely 8 minutes - luckily Land Spirit had more up its sleeve.

The second demo, "Wisps over the Hidden Stream", seems to have started recording the day the first demo was released - sometimes this is a troubling sign. But a quick listen to opener "Starlight through Winter Trees" dispels that notion. This track makes a lot with a very minimal idea, with an arpeggiated chord progression that feels like it could be inspired by some 80s goth rock tune. This track introduces sparing elements - building strings, another kind of dulcimer sound offering a two note counter melody, and something to fill out the bass. This track works extremely well, and here is where I start to get mildly frustrated that some of these tracks are so short, given the strength of the ideas at their core. The following track "Wandering Marshlands" is built on a lengthy synth loop with four distinct phrases, with subtle variations as it goes through to keep the loop from fatiguing the listener. Here, the middle section is driven by a simpler rhythm, although even this is given some syncopated bounce with the use of some subtle delay, the kind of thing which really drives the music along.

With the middle two tracks, "Rounding the Headland to Ilkolmkill" and "The Fallen Drengr", we start to hear some lengthier work - both tracks are approaching the 4 minute mark, and demonstrate this composer's ability to develop ideas and spread them out more gradually over a longer length - in particular the way a melodic idea is passed to another instrument on "Ilkolmkill", or just the more gradual build of atmosphere with "Drengr". To my ear, this proves the success of this project is not just freak inspiration captured to tape, but that combination of inspiration and self reflection that helps to push DS to the next level. Overall the more contemplative sound of this release demonstrates a nice contrast from the more jaunty beginnings demonstrated by the first release.

Finally, we have "Through the Eternal Woodland", released about a month following the previous demo. This one can certainly be credited for not immediately retreading the ground of the previous two demos. To my ears, it focuses much more on mysticism than on earthly deeds, due to the more prevalent synths, which seem to be either sequenced or arpeggiated. While there is still a lot of strong melody and atmosphere, I'm not left with as profound an impression of this release as with either of the previous two. Take "The Hag's Potion", in which the melodic elements demonstrate a lot of the same strong syncopation, but with an excitability that feels somewhat more chaotic. I have the same critique of "The Apothecarist". I want to emphasize that I appreciate the artist for trying something new, sonically and compositionally, and each of the tracks have strong elements to them. But the melodies here don't grab me in at all the same way - they feel a bit more random, a bit less intentional, and the way each element interacts with the other is less ecstatic.

I am indeed eager to see what a full length or longer EP from this artist would look like. We see across these three tracks a demonstration of some great talent in composition, arranging, and atmosphere - but the latter of these three demos feels at times like someone is trying to force a charge out of a drained battery. The good here, though, is really good, and that should be reason enough to keep an eye on Land Spirit in the future.

[hearthedungeons]

Toad Sage - Crystalline Enchantment

This is another artist I became aware of through one of the recent streamed live performances, this time the Rainbow Bridge festival in December. There, the music had a spontaneous energy that made an impression, but with so much other music streamed during that festival I confess I don't remember much else about the set. This album has a lot of that same spontaneous energy, walking a line between improvisation and structure that makes the album unpredictable, but ultimately rewarding, especially in the last two tracks when it throws the conventions of winter synth to the wind, letting the artist's personality come through.

"My Sacred Garden, My Secret Alter" begins as field recordings of birdsong and footsteps through the snow draw the listener into a looped melody. This first section utilizes a lot of expected elements of winter synth - synth pads, bells, harp. There's a lot of movement here, giving me a real sense of being stuck inside in a blizzard - entranced, but slightly anxious, especially given the little details of synth texture that flutter up throughout this section. The track reaches a fitting conclusion with a majestic final section driven by choir pads and brass.

"Visions of an Ancient Past" is almost a perfect DS tune - it has the familiar two chord progression, a looped piano melody and synth bass drone that runs throughout, and melodic elements like pan-flute and a richly textured synth adding to the texture as it develops. It's minimal, but again the artist's penchant for improvised sounding melodies serves the tune well, keeping the repetition from being too rigid and accurately reflecting the subtle variation of the natural world. A kick drum or floor tom, seemingly live as opposed to sampled, provides some momentum, and gets slowly busier as the track goes on. My one complaint is the drum is EQed in a way that makes the sound a little fatiguing in headphones - but when listening on speakers the sound gelled a lot more and I enjoyed the sense of stasis this track provided.

The third track, "Alone on the Road", takes all remaining expectations and throws them out of the window. Taking a synth sax melody and a chord progression driven by chorus pads and electric piano, the music is kicked into overdrive with the entrance of narration and full kit drums, with the sample of howling blizzard winds running throughout. In this context, it's a bold move, but it's seriously committed, and the drums are played live with some notable skill. The final track, "Crystalline Enchantment" continues this trend - after a three minute introduction that evokes New Age piano music in the best way possible, before exploding out of the gate with triumphant brass and choir, drumkit, and chugging guitar. There is no reason why this should work as well as it does, except that the artist believes that it should, and that commitment makes all the disparate elements gel together.

I'm certain that some of the more energetic elements, like the kit drums on track 3-4 and the guitars on the final track, will probably take some listeners by surprise. This is not purely the meditative winter synth experience I was perhaps expecting by the title and cover painting, and some elements here would seem to push the music into new age, post rock, or metal in a way that some listeners may not want to follow. The music is definitely recorded/mixed a little haphazardly, and if you're a snob about that sort of thing, you may not like this one. But as a listener, there's nothing more exciting than hearing an artist utterly disregard cliches, taking stylistic risks without fear of reprisal, and staying true to themselves more than to the whims and expectations of a scene. For these reasons, "Crystalline Enchantment" should not be missed.

[hearthedungeons]

Hideous Gomphidious - Keepers of the Fungal Order

Mushrooms have been a source of curiosity for Dungeon Synth artists for some years. Naturally, the sound is often lo-fi, often noisy, like Hch'xhsh and Giftsvamp, with some hints of a mysticism or magic in the composition. Hideous Gomphidious has, with this release, really upped the game on the menacing potential of the inspiration, delivering with this album an atmosphere that makes my teeth clench and my vision grow cloudy.

Take the swirling imagery of "A Destroying Angel's Horrid Curse", which begins with the slow massing of a bass-heavy drone, and hints of a decaying melody start to emerge at about the halfway point, before the whole track fades away, the swirling become more wild, more unhinged. There's a spontaneity here that makes this experience, which seems to describe slowly dying after consuming a poisonous mushroom, impossible to turn away from - minimal, but evolving. One of the biggest strengths of this album is the sound design, with synths that slowly oscillate, wavering in pitch possibly through means of delay. It gives the impression that you're looking at a melting landscape, unsure of every step - and this impression is solidified by the surrealist cover artwork. The sound world this artist creates is bleak, but it is hard to turn this album off once it gets its hooks in.

Those listeners looking for a pure DS experience may find themselves a little restless here - while there are plenty of melodies, they take their time to emerge - like in the aforementioned "Destroying Angel" or the lengthy "Mycelial Emanations", both of which don't see melodies emerging until nearly two thirds of the way through. But tracks like "Loamlurkers" and "Realm of the Sporelord", in contrast, place the melodic elements front and center, with distinct chord progressions and counter melodies built around the central themes - still entering patiently, but providing a nice contrast to the more ambient or drone-heavy tracks.

And when noisier elements enter in the album's final segment, first appearing halfway through the dire "Ergot's Ritual", and recurring through the final two tracks, it feels like a natural escalation of the album's initial promises. The final three tracks in particular feel like atmospheric or symphonic black metal without blastbeats at times - but still manages to remain distinctly DS, even as the aggression builds. My only complaint is the heavy percussion on the final track, which, only slightly, pulls me away from delicate balance of soothing menace this album sustains throughout. But overall the album is well balanced, full of rich imagery and a well-crafted ; it's one of those life changing bad trips that teaches you while it forces you to confront the depths of your psyche.

[hearthedungeons]

Ugorim - Moonlight Rites

I'll say right off the bat, I wish I hadn't done these two releases back to back. While a different project, a different aesthetic, some slightly different instrumental timbres beyond that of the gothic palette on the Erythrite Throne release , my praises are all the same. So are my complaints, although in some ways more noticeable on this release.

To recount - this artist has a phenomenal sense of atmosphere. This fact is indisputable. Some of the sounds, like slightly de-tuned electric piano, pure synth patches, and some haunted disembodied vocal pads, give the sense that this music is the soundtrack from a ritual being witnessed from too close a distance to escape it. The song titles, which give me a hint of Biblical (or at least Apocryphal) themes, perhaps give the idea that one is looking at the rites of early Christianity with a sense of fear and distrust, from a distance too close to escape them without alerting the worshippers to your presence. The first track in particular, "The Ceremony of Sephiar", conveys this dark atmosphere with admirable focus.

The problem is that for me, while atmosphere can carry a lot of weight, it does not prevent repetition from grating. While there is no indication in the album text, this one also seems to have the same loop-based composition approach utilized on Erythrite Throne's "As Shadows Crawl from the Eclipse". It also has the same issues related to that approach - each of these tracks have similar build, similar arcs, and similar tempi, and that causes even the strongest elements of this comparatively short album to blur together. The longest track here, "Eyes of Mourning Light", does not justify its length to my ears, and especially the timbre of the looped string melodies toward the end start to really drag on. "An Everlasting Sleep" is fairly compelling, but leans too heavily on its primary melody throughout, and seems to fall apart toward the end with attempts to get away from that core melody. "Under a Malevolent Moon" seems to me to be the worst offender structurally - a tense but dynamically flat piano line hammers through half of this track, leaves for a few bars as the music strips down to a single layer of haunted synth, and then all instruments return at once, in what feels like the equivalent of an expected jump-scare in a film. "The Wrath of Xhadrear", the album's closer, feels like a quality occult horror atmosphere, but the arrival of traditional kit drums in the last third of the song feels like a sudden intrusion of the modern world into the established scene, and takes me out of the listening experience.

I'm honestly a little surprised. This music is not ineptly made - there are some good melodies, and when the atmosphere is successful, it's crushing. But the composition suffers frequently from what feels to me like a lack of focus - like the album was completed quickly, without much in the way of editing or revision. It makes me wonder, then, why so much material so quickly, rather than fewer, more refined releases? I count an astonishing nine releases since the start of 2021, which is one more than the number of weeks that have elapsed in this year so far (and there are at least two other splits on the Erythrite Throne page). The artist clearly has tremendous inspiration and talent, and an extraordinary love for Dungeon Synth - - what I hope is that they also find some patience as they continue working.

[hearthedungeons]

Erythrite Throne - As Shadows Crawl from the Eclipse

This artist's prolificness is truly mindboggling to me. Being responsible for a number of releases under this title, as well as at least a half-dozen other projects available on the Serpent's Sword Records label, I feel that it would take at least a month of full time listening to truly get a handle on this artist's range.

I'm choosing to cover this release from Erythrite Throne, as opposed one of the 5 more recent releases from this project alone, because this is one I am familiar with via the artist's collaboration with Dark Age Productions - and is more relevant to a Dungeon Synth blog than some of the more Black Metal focused releases from this project.

"As Shadows Crawl from the Eclipse" is said to be recorded live (presumably no overdubs) with a single keyboard. It sounds hard to believe given the number of layers, but I hear some obvious cycles of loops that each track is built upon, presumably with a pedal of some kind. Of course the limitations of loops is that there isn't much dynamic possibility - layers can only enter, leave, and return. But that approach works here. With a palette of piano, strings, pipe organ, tubular bells, some pure synth tones, and some suitably tortured vocals both shrieked and whispered, Erythrite Throne conjures a refined sense of gothic atmosphere. I'm not familiar with the Manga that inspires this album, but there is no trace of anime soundtrack or even video game music influence, which I understand sometimes bothers DS purists.

The opening dissonant organ blasts of "Cry of the Beherit" with the immediate entrance of the vocals set a magnificent tone here, and ultimately this track's focus makes it one of my favorites on this whole release. "The Crimson Eternal", with gravely tolling bell, and piano and string melodies following in every other time the bell rings, keeps this mood quite well. Percussion and harpsichord weave lines around each other as the track continues, and eventually the bell is again left alone.

While the presentation, instrumentation, and vocals help the album pretty immediately reach its atmospheric goals, I have two complaints here. The loop based approach seems to compositionally limit some of the possibilities within each track. This is especially noticeable in some of the longer tracks toward the end which start to feel exhausting, following the same patterns of building from a single instrument, growing to increasing density, and then fading. In some longer tracks, builds like this happen twice almost identically in the track, and the repetition can be numbing. Tracks with vocals, like "The Knight Dressed in Death", are less vulnerable to this fatigue, as the vocals do not seem to be looped, and they have a truly gripping texture to them, grounding the low-fi sounds with great texture. The shorter tracks (like the opener, "Immortal Terror of the Void", "A Goddess Defiled", and "Call to Arms"), by virtue of their brevity, avoid this problem.

It's interesting to note that most of the songs, while tonal and based in a particular key, seem to rarely have full chords in them - mostly, the harmony occurs by way of the layers interacting. This results in a lot of dense compositions given the number of moving parts - sometimes this works well, but "Causality", for example, has some moments where the layers clash, seeming to compete for your attention rather than working as a whole.

Taken track to track, this album has some pretty incredible moments of atmosphere, and some solid melody throughout. But the album as a whole, running at 50+ minutes, feels too long. A lot of good ideas here are bogged down by length and not enough variation - and many of these tracks could easily have had a few minutes shaved off of them in order to streamline the overall proceedings. The final stretch of tracks feels almost interminable in how similar they are - similar tempo, similar instrumental palettes, similar construction, similar length - which is a shame, as some truly creepy moments, like "Under a Black Sun", are almost harder to appreciate when taking this album in a single sitting with close focus. I plan to review a release from a related project soon in order to get a different perspective on what this artist has to say.

[hearthedungeons]

Since I can't seem to properly edit the post, I'm reblogging(!) to include the link to Dark Age Productions' reissue, which at this moment has a mere TWO cassette copies remaining, along with presumably more stock of CDs. Don't miss this wonderful, seminal work in physical format.

Well, it’s nice that this one will be reissued soon. If the reissue is associated with a bandcamp page, I’ll change the links at that point. Valor’s La Lune Noire is a really great example of old school dungeon synth, especially for those looking for more minimal or mystical sounds to complement the brassier, militaristic sounds more common in a lot of ‘traditional’ DS. it is compositionally very simple, nothing fancy at all in the production - but the overwhelming murkiness here is an impressive feat which can’t solely be a matter of the quality of the tape rip.

Valorian Twilight starts with momentum but keeping a moderate pace and volume. It’s based around a simple 4 note pattern in what sounds like a delayed bell and some snare drum running back and forth through the mix. There’s a point where a bell and vocal sample cuts through and the whole tune pivots. The net change isn’t huge, but it’s a powerful effect - the snaredrum is gone, but the intensity is extremely high, and remains there for the rest of this short track. One more pivot occurs later with the bell sound still anchoring the track, before gaining a more club-like muted kick and a choir sound that suggests space or EDM, but at this point it feels like the right choice, keeping things firmly in the mystical medieval vibe

The second track, Enigmatic Hearts, is much more spacey - still enough of a sense of direction to not feel like ambient, but bordering on that amount of sound and activity. There’s an extremely dire intro, sounding almost like foreshadowing the end of the world, then the texture is cut with a huge thunderbolt, and the track fully changes in mood. The main section of this track focuses on what could be a train noise, some regular, wave-like sample that repeats every beat. It adds a lot of texture to what proceeds for awhile with two organ chords and a very soft kick drum interjecting. Finally this sample disappears and the organ chord changes a bit, and eventually a low simple melody creeps in. It doesn’t change much about the feel or structure of the song, to be honest, even as a simple two note pattern in the strings creeps in. The song ends and I have a hard time believing 7 minutes has just passed. 

The next track, Neverseen Depths and Dungeons, feels like a direct cousin to a Bathory intro - bells chiming like struck anvils, and a simple descending melody in a choir pad on top of a static drone, punctuated with some reverse cymbal swells. How is it possible that this is so simple yet so good? It’s really repetitive, but I guess the regular introduction of new elements makes it feel like it’s staying fresh, even if it’s the same core drone underneath the entire time. This is the prime example of how low-fi sometimes benefits the genre - there’s some noisy, textural stuff going on underneath (perhaps an ancestor of the creaking mechanical textures of Abandoned Places) that I almost don’t want to hear any more clearly, because obscured as it is it has a really beautiful quality. Track 4, “The Chaining of the Messenger” is quite sparse and melancholic - once again, a low drone, simple kick drum percussion and a melody in a higher string patch. We hear more of these inexplicable textural noises as the melody departs. I wonder if it’s an early example of digital sampling, as there’s a rhythmic regularity, even if it doesn’t quite match up with what the drums are doing. The effect is super cool, and even as the composition remains minimal, this release continues to engage me.

The fifth track, Stones that Wept, goes for a more actively sinister sound, with minor-key melodies in a choir pad, some church-like bells punctuating the gloomy low drone and a sample that sounds a bit like a scream cutting through. This is probably the most compositionally refined, in terms of having distinct sections in the song, rather than just gradual changes over the same drone. Still manages the same ensnaring, hypnotic feel throughout, an impressive feat.

I guess this reminds me of Erdstall in mood, if not in composition. it’s extraordinary work anyway, a fine balance between atmosphere and composition that I’ve not heard replicated in the modern scene - plenty of minimal pieces and plenty of extremely atmospheric work, but none that seems to get this balance of both. 

[hearthedungeons]

Castle Zagyx - Doors to the Battlefields of Ertbe

This one is a ride. Like other recently covered releases, it has a bit of a feeling of walking the border of DS and something else, but given the clear inspiration from orchestral fantasy scores, I suspect this one will be more widely embraced by stodgy DS fans.

There's quite a lot to like here. Of course there is always the chance that a DS composer, when aiming for 'orchestral', will miss the notion of 'orchestration' which is what tends to make those classic film scores classic. It's not just the melodies and pounding percussion, but the balance and interplay of instruments that makes the texture so effective. "Forty Sails, Dragons of War, Breaking the Waves at Night" is an incredible demonstration of this - starting with a simple, familiar melody in bowed strings that expands and pivots with the addition of choir, brass, and subtle percussion as this track continues. There's a sense of phrasing here that also makes an impact - wherein the instruments are edited so well that it truly does feel like a conducted orchestra, with slight adjustments in volume and tempo from phrase to phrase. The attention to detail, especially in dynamics, are one of the things that make this music so listenable - not immediate builds and fades, but some gradual that happen over the course of whole sections of music, like the final section of "The Sacred Oriflamme", which add a subtle emotional impact to the music. Or the fadeaway from dynamic march to softly sustained strings in the middle of "The Runic Sword of Halskpa". I could spend this whole review calling out individual moments like this that make a profound impression, but rest assured there is no shortage of them.

It is undeniable that Basil Pouledoris' score for Conan the Barbarian made an impact on the shaping of the sound of dungeon synth, and on this album. But here, I hear profound influences from Ennio Morricone, another prominent film composer with an expert touch at orchestration. I hear it in particular in the almost playful syncopation in the harp and percussion of "Mountain of the Worm Astiborax", and the high strings that drive the melody forward have an almost swaggering quality to them. Maybe a bit of Bernard Herrmann in the cloudy harmonic tension sometimes giving way to dissonance in the string swells of "Spoils of War". (Anyway, this short aside is a moment to namedrop, and to remind DS fans that OTHER film composers exist besides Pouledoris and Howard Shore.)

Of course, with this focus on creating a realistic orchestral timbre has, to my ears, two limitations. The first is that there are a number of moments that feel melodically familiar here - not a copy by any means, but with the influence so clear it is sometimes harder for me to imagine the composer's intended narrative suggestion because I am so reminded of some music cue from a distantly remembered film. The second is that, when balancing the palette of an entire orchestra, composers will frequently reuse a motif, either reharmonizing or transposing it. Sometimes it crosses a line where the idea slightly overstays its welcome. I hear this in particular in "Bascinet, Hauberk, and Flamberge". The track begins with a very properly epic fanfare at the top, but then spends a good chunk of time kicking a motif around in various keys, from instrument to instrument. It sounds like a Black Metal riff LARPing as an orchestral motif, and the repetition is slightly too much for my ears. Also, there's one brass note in "Marching through High Pass" which loudly juts out to me amongst the otherwise delicately constructed musical texture - truly the only moment on this album where I'm reminded that I'm not listening to a proper orchestra. The list of complaints are few.

Ultimately, though, this release sets a HIGH watermark for high-fidelity, orchestral-inspired dungeon synth. I am usually biased toward more purely synthesized work but this album makes quite an argument. The closing track, "The Eternal Wheel..." with its subtle organ beginning and patient build over the course of its nearly 8 minutes, sends me off into horizons unknown, full of questions that can only be answered by simply playing the album again. Special mention to the album cover by Slava Gerj, which seems a deliberate nod to recent Summoning covers, but steps up the level of detail to a frightening degree - an image that could, like the music within, be studied for hours without fully comprehending all of the details within.

[hearthedungeons]

Grimdor - Tharkûn (Demo) and The Mountain Path (Demo)

In the past I've chosen to review two short albums by an artist because they are a complement to each other. In this case, it's just because these two releases comprise maybe a total of 9 minutes of music. Grimdor is apparently quite loved for this sort of thing - other releases have combined DS and raw Black Metal into the sound, and those set a fairly high standard for that mix of genres that is often imitated and very rarely reached, in my opinion, with a combination of low-fi sound and fully conceived songwriting and execution that perhaps sounds easier to do than it actually is.

For the releases at hand, we have pure DS. Tharkûn (Demo) clocks in at 5 minutes and 58 seconds, while The Mountain Path is 2 minutes and 48 seconds. Both releases seem to be recorded in a single take, with a single instrument setting. The brevity of the tracks means, for the most part, that not a note is wasted. You'll hear absolutely nothing new here harmonically - these songs are all built on the very archetypal chord progressions of dungeon synth, but it is their strong melodic presence that drives them. These melodies - sometimes leading the piece, sometimes working in the space around a simple rhythmic figure - all seem improvised on the spot and in relation to the keyboard patch used. If there's more than a single musical idea, you never hear each idea more than once - no returning back to the original idea if the tune ever departs from its starting point. Compositionally this is about as barebones as it gets. Four out of 5 of the pieces on Tharkûn have the same key center (A minor), and when you're dealing with archetypal DS composition, you end up with what feels like some redundant melodies. The first three tracks here seem perfectly evocative and assured, the kind of timeless combination of . The last two feel a little more meandering or uncertain, as though perhaps a creative or chemical buzz was starting to fade.

The pros of this approach are that when the iron is hot, the end result is totally evocative - for less than 90 seconds per song. Some of these melodies, in combination with the minimal but well chosen sound world, are about as evocative of the mythic/medieval sound as any of the 90s classic recordings. The cons are that 6 minutes is, for most of us, not enough time to really make a proper escape from the world. As part of a gaming or reading playlist (perhaps consisting of the entire discography, which would be maaaaybe one hour at most), this music would make an excellent contribution.

The even shorter "The Mountain Path (Demo), begins with one track, also in A minor. This one feels like it could've been left off of Tharkûn, but it's a phenomenal melody, about as complex as can be accomplished with a simplistic progression like this without feeling too meandering. The second track offers some pretty significant contrast (compared to the other release), both in terms of the qualities of the melody and the key (F# minor). The progression is similar, but the character of each is quite a contrast.

So the question on my mind - why so many short releases? This artist seems to have access to a dungeon stream of great purity, yet only choses to dip a shallow cup in for each release. The artwork is evocative, yet the tracks have no titles. The album titles themselves are unfamiliar to a person with a more-than-passing knowledge of the Tolkien universe, but without much else to go on, it feels like a default setting for creative inspiration. Does the artist feel as though the magic would somehow be ruined if the length of these releases got any longer? I would love to know

But it is useless to complain about what isn't here - what IS here is quite strong and evocative. I bet this artist could destroy the competition if they chose to put out even a 20 minute release with even a tiny bit more versatility, though.

[hearthedungeons]

Dim - Compendium III

We're spending a couple articles in a row focusing on things pretty firmly on the edges of DS, and sometimes you have to walk the borders of a thing to know the thing better. DIM started with Compendium I back in 2017 with an album that felt like pretty pure Fief-worship - a variety of plucked folk stringed instruments, harpsichords, jaunty compositions. It had its own stamp, and that was certainly made evident by the widespread enthusiasm. Compendium II brought more delicate and sensitive orchestration into the mix alongside the prevalence of folk instruments, and the effort to innovate, rather than recreate, on the established formula helped catapault this project into a well deserved spotlight.

This third album (did I read somewhere that it was the final?) is yet again a departure - reining in the orchestral elements, and bringing in some very slight EDM elements into the production and composition. Whether it's the dancy percussion elements which fade into the opening track "Woldur" about midway through, or the gated percussion and filtered viola on "Mound Dweller", there's definitely some conceptual similarities here to the recently covered Cybard album, although the DIM release predates that album by several months. The more sparing use of these elements here makes them more impactful, and there's a genuine sense of melancholy and nostalgia throughout the composition that really adds some significant emotional range to this short album as a whole.

Take the delicate grand piano chords of "Old Skald", neatly decorated with some plucked folk strings. It's a single idea that is allowed the space to breath over 3 minutes, and it is a nice palette cleanser between two more upbeat tracks. "Mound Dweller", as with many tracks on this album, is significantly improved by the presence of live viola, attributed to Hannah Geisinger - her contributions on this album, whether sampled/processed, looped, or just given an edge through acoustic technique, add a lot of character to this music by connecting to what I hear as Swedish/Scandinavian fiddle traditions. Even played relatively straight as on the layers of "Elska", the depth of texture and timbre is a marvelous addition to the high quality sampled instruments employed here.

The pacing here is also excellent - in a relatively short album clocking in at under 26 minutes, the artist takes care to balance more rousing pieces with more contemplative pieces, offering a variety of key signatures, and centering different instruments in the mix. The aforementioned "Mound-Dweller" and the energetic "Heska" are among the most experimental pieces in terms of the dynamic mixing and clear inspiration from beyond the realm, but taken in context of the entire album, they are a natural fit in the tapestry of this short journey, conveying excitement and action without submitting to DS (or Hollywood) cliche. The short length, as with previous DIM releases, leaves me wanting more.

I'm having a hard time finding things to critique here. I know for certain the percussive and production elements on certain tracks here will be a turn-off to stiff-lipped traditionalists. I genuinely appreciate them but I find them quite stimulating - for those used to DS that is static, or looking for music an accompaniment to reading or gaming, these elements may possibly disrupt the mood. I also find moments of the final track, "Traust", to be a little too reminiscent of some of Yasunori Mitsuda's compositions for the Chrono Cross soundtrack. That influence can be heard throughout the three releases of this project, but on this quite short track it feels more like direct imitation than borrowing and repurposing an element. But that's me really actively searching for criticisms. Overall, the composition, instrumental timbre and production work in near perfect tandem to create a highly involved and engaging musical journey.

[hearthedungeons]

Lurk - From the Depths of Y'ha-nthlei

This one gives an interesting counterpoint to the previous review. To my knowledge this artist is also active in circles outside of the traditional dungeon synth affiliations, namely that of instrumental trap-hip-hop production. I urge and challenge you to keep reading if the previous sentence was for whatever reason a turnoff, however.

My real introduction to this artist was through his performance at a Twitch streamed "Dungeon Siege", during which he did several selections from this album in a way that seemed more like live remixing than traditional performance. The performance was nevertheless compelling and effective, in part due to the green-screened apocalyptic sky footage being aired behind him, and in part due to the lively chat, in which the community seemed to be eating out of his hand. There was a dynamic nature to the music that really worked.

I like this music on record a tiny bit less - but it is still quite immersive in this presentation, especially with a pair of headphones on to appreciate details of panning, fading, and filtering. Sonically, this is at the extreme edges of dungeon synth. The percussion, quite often of an orchestral or tribal flavor, is at the forefront, and there are some blasts of low brass, 'eastern' stringed instruments and the like mixed in among the more broad cinematic swells and fades, and numerous atmospheric sound effects like crow-calls, sampled dialogue, and water sounds. But it's not purely dark ambient - the heavy percussion adds a lot of momentum to these simple harmonic structures, often what are basically one-or-two chord jams at their core, but brought to life with arpeggiators and pulsing synths. The Lovecraftian and general horror themes are clearly very dear to the creator of this project, and ultimately give this music a sense of focus. The opening, titular track of this record really sets the tone of the album, and without setting an exact formula which the artist then repeats 7 more times to fill out a full length release.

The sound design is excellent and thoughtful, and is clearly the main focus of this music. "A Mountain Walked ft. Murazor" shows a lot of reliance on samples, psychedelic transitions, and effects. As someone with more of a disconnect from this style of music creation, I find myself really appreciating the more straightforward selections of melody, like the sitar-like samples on the title track, or the piano waltz that drives "Vast Plains of Madness". I have to admit that as much as I miss what to me feels like pure composition, I marvel at the full range of producer-style effects that inject drama into these tracks (like the extremely compelling way "Madness" eventually dissolves into trippy nothingness).

I review this release on the back of the Cybard release as an example of how the concept of dungeon synth as an evocative and transportative music can indeed stretch and survive as artists without a pure DS or Black Metal background come exploring these realms, bringing new influences and production techniques with them. But where Cybard seemed a bit more blunt in both its composition and execution, Lurk has a sense of sonic ambiguity that allows my mind to wander in the way I want from a DS release. Maybe I am a little alienated at times by what feels like a relative lack of melody, and maybe the sampled dialogue does make it a little harder to have this music as a soundtrack for reading - but the sonic construction and intent to evoke is spot on. Perhaps we can favorably view Lurk and producers of his ilk as "Great Old Ones", and welcome the dissolution of the known that they bring, especially when the result is this effective.

[hearthedungeons]

Cybard - CMLXXXIV

I hope the composer/producer of this project, who submitted it to my ask-box some months back, doesn't mind my making a slight example of his project.

This album of fantasy/mythology inspired electronic music is a fine example of why, even taking into account the more hi-fi/soundtrack influenced projects (among them Murgrind, Seregost, Lurk, DIM), not every instrumental project with historical or fantasy themes fits as dungeon synth. "But [blogger]", you may say, "Didn't you JUST say to take you out back and shoot you if you ever used the phrase "not Dungeon Synth?" Well, yes, and damn you for reading carefully. This artist clearly labels this music Dungeon synth and took great efforts to promote it in Dungeon Synth circles - but I would say that this album only occasionally delivers what I usually want from a DS album.

That's not to say that this music is ineptly made. This producer clearly knows what he is doing. The choice of sounds, with a mix of modern orchestral and folk instrument VSTs, is evocative. There are some nice arrangement/orchestration touches, especially in the balance between melody and countermelody, which are technically quite polished. I'm not a huge enough fan of the electro genres this artist seems to be primarily involved in to fully understand what's going on here production-wise, but there's definitely a little of what I would call that "synthwave wobble" in the percussion, which is a little disorienting with the clearly folk-oriented sound libraries. I especially like the syncopation of "Offshore", and there's some nice nuance to the melodic composition of "Viking Lullaby". The artist himself also uses the description "Folktronica", and to me this is a much more apt term than Dungeon Synth to convey what's going on here musically and otherwise. The drums are right up front in most of the tracks, and over the course of the album, that does become a bit monotonous, especially in places where they mask some of the other arrangement strengths. Listening to this album as a whole, you definitely hear a few of these patterns get reused from track to track. I don't think this would be as much of a problem with a traditional synthwave sound palette, and maybe it is the hybrid sound design that makes this more apparent.

I want to avoid calling things "not dungeon synth" because it leaves me with the considerable task of defining what DS is. But to me what this release doesn't deliver to me as someone evaluating DS primarily is a real sense of mystery and listener participation. There's a clear intent, via the artwork, song titles, sound design and so on, to evoke Scandinavian/Viking history. But there's no room for the listener to take a journey other than exactly what is intended by the producer, and that is ultimately one of the the things that I crave most about DS. The best parallel might be, for those of you who remember Playstation games, the difference between a pre-rendered and a real-time, in-engine background. Cybard is sparkling and full of detail, but the camera angles are fixed throughout. The nods to EDM, in the production of the drums and in some kind of house-inspired rhythms (in particular on "The Kraken") take this music too close to the modern world for me to see this album as escapist music. I must stress above all that although this is not really my thing, this album sets a target and hits it dead in the center; the attention to detail in the sound design is excellent, and the composition is overall well balanced. But I can see a lot of DS fans shaking their heads at this one.

[hearthedungeons]

Grîmmöld - Noldorin Halls

This album right from the get-go has a lot of signifiers of DS - special characters in the project title, song and album title indicating a Tolkien connection, various medieval fonts. The music, full of relatively crude sounding MIDI synths, is definitely trying to evoke something "old school" in its approach. This is one to listen to at low volumes, since the mix is extremely hot (with some clipping coming through) and not a drop of reverb in sight. I don't consider myself a hi-fi snob, but at regular volumes these qualities make the album close to unlistenable - even a touch of panning or reverb might make this album physically more pleasant to listen to. A shame, as there are some quality arrangements here that are obscured by how this album is produced.

The first track, "A Once Mighty Anvil", is a relatively cliche medieval melody. It's brief enough, but to my ears is trying too hard to be classic DS without bringing anything you've probably not heard before if you're moderately aware of this genre. "The Underground Lake", with slightly more dissonant and wandering melodies, provides some more interest - this has more of the scope of 90s CRPG music, but the sound quality becomes pretty abrasive at points when all the instruments are playing in unison. Some nice touches, like a crescendo of the timpani at the end, are less noticeable because of these details.

"In the Mountain Where Hammers Are Felled" has a nice momentum to it - again, clipping issues make the physical listening somewhat unpleasant, but the composition here is jaunty and adventurous while remaining dark - a nice short guitar and wind melody breaks up the main riff of the piece without disrupting the driving momentum, and some nice touches where melodies reappear in different instruments show that there's some real ambition in these arrangements despite the sonic problems, and in the span of 3 1/2 minutes, this track really takes me places. "Mithril Streams" revisits the medieval feel of the first track, and while I appreciate the sonic diversity (and lack of clipping compared to the previous two tracks), this melodic style is not as effective in the hands of this composer - towards the last minute of the piece, when additional instruments join, this piece finds a little bit more value.

The album's weakest moment, "Sirannon", feels like an attempt to shoehorn raw Black Metal into this EP to prove a point about how indebted DS is to Black Metal. There are some cool ideas here, and it's interesting to hear someone attempt this blend of styles without even an obligatory nod to Summoning's production style - but as with previous tracks, there's a weird combination of clarity and loudness that makes this track close to unlistenable. I'm also not a huge fan of these vocals. "Moonlit Iron" is compositionally more conservative, but this seems to be something this artist does well - even if they are chord progressions that are now considered part of the DS canon, there's a nice easy flow to the arrangement, with orchestral bass drum driving the tune while brass, piano and winds take turns moving the rhythm along.

I want to emphasize this album is not valueless. The artist clearly has an idea of what they are doing, and the strong points of these arrangements indicate some significant creativity even working in the relatively strict confines of "Traditional/Old School DS", with just enough nods to the sweeping sounds of CRPG soundtracks to avoid some of the monotony that sometimes plagues releases with this intent. Two things are confusing - most of the other releases by this artist focus on more broad pagan themes, rather than Tolkien, and the other releases, while raw, are at least not ear-shredding in their volume and overall production. One gets the impression that in choosing to do a trad-styled release with Tolkien themes, that the artist chose deliberately to make the album unlistenable, as though this was an innate quality of 90s, traditional DS. Taking the album as it is, I would say this choice makes it harder to appreciate what's good here.

[hearthedungeons]

Wyndcrawler - Obsidian Swords for the Heavendwellers

It is a little surprising that the theme of dragons has not appeared more commonly in Dungeon Synth since its inception, and since its revival. (There was Vaelestrasz's excellent "Adventures of the Red Whelpling", which was quite an exhilirating release, and I can't think of many others.) In part, this could have to do with the variety of meanings and significance Dragons have in various cultures throughout the world - the modern fantasy perception of a dragon is, after all, an amalgamation of eastern and western perceptions of size, nobility, sentience, and other qualities.

This release aims for a majestic, windswept sound design. Everything is drenched in reverb, many of the melodies seem driven by strings and organs, and there is a definite melodic focus to the longer compositions here. "In Great Halls Ov Old Kings" alternates a percussion and organ-driven opening section, before giving way to an alternate section with a slowly faded-in buzzing synth, and a higher, stirring string melody. We build with some arpeggiator-like organs, and some very subtle percussion almost buried in the mix, while choirs fade in, adding to the density and texture. The thickness of the reverb here makes it a little hard to distinguish the elements from one another in the mix, and I find myself wondering if it was possible to have less reverb without losing the feel. The final bit of the song feels like a build without a drop - somewhat anti-climatic, given the extremely strong start of this lengthy track.

I am extremely pleased however at the seamless crossfade between tracks 2 and 3, a choice that adds to listener immersion even on an album like this which clocks in at under 30 minutes. The murky production here does lend to the impression that you're glimpsing a majestic creature through the clouds. But it does also make the first third of "Even with the Night (Does the Sky Glow with Hellfire)" a bit of a wash, without much to grab onto except a murky two chord-harmonic progression that seems to be laid out with organ and choirs and a low drone. A narrative poem attached to the bandcamp page indicates that the music is rendered from the perspective of the dragons, but the music makes it feel as though it is portraying we humans, on the ground, catching only a fearful glimpse of these creatures. This impression is the strongest part of this track, and while I think I understand the choice to bury these mixes in reverb, it really does the majesty of the music a bit of a disservice. The final track, "Weeping in the Ash", follows a similar harmonic progression of the previous two tracks. I should say that this is not an album-killing quality - there's enough diversity of keys to avoid the whole album feeling samey, and the discernable details of the arrangement/orchestration are juicy enough to really sink one's fangs into. But I must emphasize that the sound design, while conveying the majesty of flight and the ancient, unknowable qualities of dragonkind, does seem to obscure some of the details of the arrangements, which upon this third listen, feel like absolute strengths.

Nevertheless, this is definitely an album I will return to - minor criticisms aside, it is an immersive listen, and has a strong idea of what world it wants to take the listener to. And I hope this is a theme Dungeon synth will explore more often - there's a sense of melancholy and majesty here that works in great balance, and I imagine will appeal to those who prefer the more orchestral/cinematic DS projects as well as the more melancholic side which is what initially drew me to the genre. More importantly, given the range of perceptions and portrayals of dragons, I hope that this theme can allow other artists to cleanly inject their personal associations into their music, instead of blindly following what this project has done.

[hearthedungeons]

A commitment to honesty

Hi there to readers new and old:

When this blog began, it began in an absence of dungeon criticism. I don't mean crossed-arms gatekeeping, nor am I referring to personal attacks - but simply honest analysis of the music and presentation for what it is.

In the years since this blog was at peak activity, a number of things have changed about Dungeon Synth - most notably the size of the scene, but also the development of adjacent genres that are extremely polarizing, AKA comfy synth. The heightened tensions in the community on Facebook (primarily, though this does spill over elsewhere), has resulted in battle lines being drawn, allegiances being formed and broken, and plenty of feelings being hurt. In short it's medieval. But not the way we all seem to want by participating in this genre. It has also resulted in a lot of futile attempts to define the genre without actually making an effort to talk about the inherent quality of the music.

I always hoped that this blog and its relative anonymity would allow me to honestly criticise music without personally attacking an artist or saying they "don't understand Dungeon Synth" or any of the common knowitall attacks. I believe that this level of honest criticism is, above all, in service of the music and the scene - not to chase anyone out or draw lines that would deliberately exclude some projects, but to simply evaluate how well they manage a few things:

-Sound Design

-Composition

-Escapism

Of course it is impossible to completely remove personal taste from the equation, but all reviews in the future will be committed to evaluation along those lines - giving each reviewed album an honest chance to survive in a growing scene that is as driven by aesthetics and artifact-scarcity as it is by sonic elements. If I ever use the phrase "not dungeon synth", take me out back and shoot me. But I do think it is worth considering how successful a release is at "being" dungeon synth, and that will be discussed in detail. Thank you for your long-time support, and I hope to be more consistent with this project in the future.