There should be stuff like this made in the MOD format.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glnpnifV4Fk

I wasn't very impressed with some of the random tracks I clicked on, but I am a big fan of Klaus Schulze and that sort of stuff. So this could be something I should dig a little into.

Yep, I'm a huge ISN fan. I think "Enter now the world" is my favourite of the bunch. I would have to say that Early 90's CMI releases are without a doubt some of the most pivotal albums in developing my tastes, along with the same period of World Serpent Distribution's apocalyptic folk releases. I think out of the Martial Industrial style my #1 album is the DI6/Der Blutharsch collaboration, "Take care and control", I think its absolutely untouchable.

Not meaning to go too far off topic, but on the subject of escapism via dystopia, I'm reminded of a quote from Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order bass player) where he was talking about their early works fascination with some sort of imagined ww2. The gist of it was that TV in the 70's was absolutely full of that sort of imagery and it was somehow still vital and real to them. While I'm considerably younger than they are, I grew up in the time-warp of NZ in the 80's, which was like the UK in the early 70's and that rang quite true. All those Sven Hassel and Leo Kessler pulp novels I read as a 10 year old manifesting themselves now hehe. While I was into Fantasy as a boy (LOTR obviously, Dragonlance, various AD&D stuff) I moved well away from it in favour of a particular style of very grim dystopian science fiction (J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Philip K. Dick etc plus a lot of the Black Library's 40k novelisations). I tried Raymond E. Fiest and while it was ok to while away a wet sunday afternoon I thought it was pretty lightweight. George R.R. Martin grabbed me quite a bit though because its so devoid of the typical "Mary Sue" character types you see in fantasy novels. Le Guin's Earthsea books are also a long-term love of mine.

I guess where I'm going with this is a slightly more elaborative question about Fantasy as a genre (both in music and writing) and what it means to people. Might be better moved to a different thread, but its a curious thing to me, now that I think about it, that Fantasy seems to maintain a lot more of a hopeful outlook whereas a huge if not overwhelming segment of Sci-Fi writing is a nightmarish set of visions.

Nah, doesn't sound sillly at all, it's simply obvious that Mortiis' music does a lot for you. To be honest, I haven't had time to actually sit down and give his albums (or hardly any DS albums) a deep, concentrated listen... or any albums, for that matter. Most of my listening time these days has to be on a semi-distracted basis as I always seem to be embroiled in other activities simultaneously, so it's perfectly possible some of these DS albums could totally swallow up my mind under more meditative circumstances. Certainly something I look forward to experimenting with



Hold on to your open-mindedness. It'll probably do you more good than harm, really.
I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person as well, though when it comes to music research, there's only so much time I feel I can spend on an artist or band before I have to make a judgment as to whether or not they're worth any more than I've given them already. Sometimes first impressions can be deceiving, and it's rewarding to revisit something and have it surprise you with how much better it is than you'd originally thought. Though usually I'll only bother to revisit things that seem to have a nagging element of interest in them in the first place, some intriguing deeper quality that made itself apparent from the outset, albeit obscured by confounding initial impressions... a feeling that there's something there to get and I'm just not hearing it yet, or only half-hearing it.

In Pazuzu's case, it may very well be the same, but there are so many superficial elements about it that bug the hell out of me that I just intuitively know that even if I did get some of the deeper aspects, I'd never feel like spinning those albums over something I simply enjoy a hell of a lot more. Summoning, for instance .

Oh right, Lost Tales. Yeah I wasn't very into that one. Way too many goddamn film samples that didn't work nearly well enough. It did have some nice qualities, though, if I remember correctly.
Never checked out Grabesmond, but now I will! And from what little I heard of Die Verbannten Kinder Evas, I wouldn't classify them as dungeon synth.



Hmm, well now that you're prompting me to listen to Dark Ages again, I can see what you mean. I guess I'd forgotten about some of the more synthy/melodic character of some of these tracks. Dark Ages was definitely one of those bands that I felt were worth revisiting, so I'll do that.
By the way, if you like Dark Ages that much, I'd suggest you look into the Italian dark/black ambient artist New Risen Throne. His Chants for the Cold and Dying Sun and his contribution to the Shadows Over Humanity split have a very cryptic, medieval-type atmosphere that I think you'd enjoy.



Will do!



Hehe! Umm...incense is nice. I don't think I've ever made it a conscious part of my music listening practice. Unless you consider hashish incense. Interesting...do you find it lends you greater access to fantasy visions or something?

Good to hear you've got ISN in your life. Though I'd have to say that Enter Now the World feels to me like his only essential album... all the others seem completely disposable in the face of it. It's one of those moments where an artist completely encapsulates everything about their vision in the best aesthetic form they're capable of, rendering everything that comes after (or before) sort of redundant. It's really a masterpiece.

I'll check out the release you mentioned, though I haven't ever been much for beat-driven martial industrial. It's usually too upbeat for what I'm looking for in that artistic field. My preference leans a lot more toward the more contemplative soundscapeish/orchestral material.

EDIT: Hold on...just listened to Take Care and Control, and there was hardly any industrial or martial on there . Sure you're thinking of the right album, Scorntyrant?

Totally. Look at "Smashed to bits (in the peace of the night)", "The Odin Hour" etc etc - all constructed (like all the earlier Der Blutharsch albums) out of orchestral loops and vintage samples. its more or less a Der Blutharsch album of the "track of the hunted" era with Douglas P doing vocals. This is a film I made to the first track, are we talking about the same album?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEXGYyGkjBA

Uh, incense is sth I was "in" in my teen days when listening to some goth metal with my then-girlfriend. However it was nothing really for me (done it for "romantic reasons", haha) and nowadays I can't stand it and even get headaches most of the time I encounter it.
Besides the music I don't need any other supplements to "transport me to another place".

Perhaps it's only me then...


I'm not sure it 'lends greater access to visions,' but rather reinforces the activity I set out to do. Scent mostly seems to work on a memory basis, which might be why Mr. Mausling doesn't find it helpful since he tends to associate it it with romance. I personally tend to burn it when I do creative things, so it more just puts me in the proper frame of mind to focus on what I want to get out of the music. So in a way, I'd say it does. Haha @ hashish. While I've never tried hash, I was smoking cannabis pretty regularly when I was working on that Valscharuhn album. It does put a new perspective on dungeon synth, but nothing to write home about, so to speak . Also, it's rare that I'll go to write a post for the blog without at least a few drinks, however I think that has more to do with confidence in writing than any new insights into the music.


What do you think of this song? It's probably the best dungeon synth song I've discovered since I started the blog.


In my experience the 'weird fiction' writers tend to capture the particular flavor of dungeon synth better than any other fantasists, though they've had no direct influence on any of the musicians as far as I can tell. But Clark Asthon Smith and Lord Dunsany seem to be writing in the exact tone of this music. I expect you won't be familiar with their works, but a few of H.P. Lovecraft's fantasy works really match the mood as well, such as Celephais and The White Ship. And in my correspondence with grauer_mausling, I know he is a great fan of the works of Robert E. Howard, which are, of course, strongly present in artists like Lord Wind.


Yeah, there's only so much time in the day. It's easy for me remain open-minded about dungeon synth since it's still so small of a genre. However, I've mostly given up on trying new metal quite a while ago. I'll check out a release here and there, but it almost always seems to be derivitive garbage. The old stuff is mostly all I listen to any more. However, I think ds is still young enough that almost every artist is at least somewhat pure.


Is this drone? I'll try it out, but I really don't get into drone music very much.

Interesting what you mention about the use of incense as a memory trigger. Smell is regarded as one of the most effective triggers for sense memory, so it makes, er, sense. Insense.



Definitely! For me there are also visual art references conjured up, such as the miniaturized visions you find in medieval illuminations, or the drawings of Tolkien himself.



Well, there's always Blut Aus Nord . If you haven't yet, I strongly encourage you to give his debut Ultima Thulée a spin. Or, well, anything from BAN's discography, really. For my money, they're the most consistently unique and consistently mindblowing metal band out there. Pure, transcendental, visionary music of the highest order.



No, it's not drone, it's too active for that. Just dark ambient that's got a particular style that I thought you'd enjoy based on your appreciation for Dark Ages. It's quite difficult to recommend artists in this vein because dungeon synth and ambient actually have so little in common. But the Cyclic Law label definitely has a few artists I think you might enjoy, including or apart from New Risen Throne. If you end up liking NRT at all, I can try and throw some other recs your way.

generally (should I say naturally?) dunegon synth works very good with ceratin types of literature. Robert E- Howard and Clark Asthon Smith surely fit perfectly but I personally found it best fitting with the great "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories of Fritz Leiber. Said stories are also early works of fantasy literature.
Whereas Robert E. Howards stuff is gritty, brutal and dark, Leiber's stories come along more witty, adventurous, mystical and partly even having slight ironic undertones in the dialogues.
Esp. this adventurous setting works great with many dungeon synth acts like Wongraven, Mortiis "Keiser..." album and Lord Wind's "Atlantean...". The more gloomier dungeonsynth albums however are better palced to Howard's and Smith's works.
Oh, not to forget the Venus and Barsoom/Mars novels from famous Edgar Rice Burroughs. Though being early works of science fiction, the outer planet setting is more of a wild fantasy nature (guess where Cameron stole many creature's styles for Avatar...) and the more uprising songs of e.g. "Atlantean Monument" brings this to live in a great way!

Sitting next to a moss-covered stone wall under golden-leaved trees this morning, listening to Myrrdin's Glomung Ofer Se Weald. Got a thumbs up from an old man for some unknown reason. Perhaps he was a Wise Elder, or a Star-Finder of some kind.

I agree. I saw the reference to Kuranes in your Cintecele Diavolui review and thought it was quite apt - the dungeon synth artist as both an "emperor of a dimension unknown" and as a loner noodling on a cheap keyboard in his basement (or in Burzum's case a prison - literal "dungeon synth"), his work mocked and misunderstood. I think that Lovecraft's "Quest of Iranon" is also apropos. In general I like Lovecraft's Dunsany-inspired dream works more than his horror stories, and think they fit well with the mood of most dungeon synth.

Can anybody recommend me anything in this genre made with an 8-bit computer, preferably C64 (although Spectrum or Atari 800 might also be interesting)?

you possibly mean bands playing such a thing and not soundtracks from 8-bit videogames, right? Besides many classic games with great sound I can't really think of a band, sorry... :/

However the mentioning of such music totally fits as dungeonsynth (as pointed out already by someone else) could also be seen as surely influenced by music from old videogames (esp. old RPG games).

and while we're at it - try this Amiga piece of music (ok, Amiga is 16-bit)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qipWqOwkceg

Sorry for the late respone.

I do like Blut Aus Nord, on occasion. "The Work Which Transforms God" is particularly interesting, though I'd hardly call it a favorite of mine. However, I do really love Deathspell Omega, and pretty much everything they've done since "Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice." Averse Sefira is pretty interesting as well. Still, none of them compare to the early nineties bands, especially not the thousands of copycats we see today. I can't tell whether that's because I've "grown out" of black metal (and metal in general) or if all these new bands really are so mediocre. If it is the former, I'd be willing to argue that dungeon synth can serve as the slightly more mature genre black metal fans can migrate towards as they exit their teens.

Haha, I like that, very mystical. Although if you were listening to it out loud, I imagine he was just happy to not be hearing rap, death metal, or hipster music .

That's not an opinion heard too often when it comes to Lovecraft, but I tend to really favor his dream stories as well. They utterly blew my mind as a teenager.

Hmm, I thought Ultima Thulée might appeal to you in particular, as it's got some aesthetics and spirit that harken to dungeon synth territory. And no love for Paysage d'Hiver?

I guess I hold a pretty different view than yours in a few ways. I don't really think much of a lot of the early nineties bands, and in my eyes a lot more interesting music was made after 1994. Also, metal wasn't something I was into in my teens virtually at all--I delved more fully into it in my mid-twenties--so I feel I came to it with an already more 'matured' perspective that didn't get tangled up with any teenage baggage or naiveté. It's something I grew into rather than grew out of.

Also, the notion of dungeon synth being somehow more mature than metal I find a little funny. It's kind of like 'graduating' from pulp fiction to storybooks. I guess I'd see "more mature" music as something actually more complex and intellectual, like Arvo Pärt or Bach or something. Still very fantastical stuff, in my mind! If you like dungeon synth I'd think it'd be impossible to not appreciate this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShIs1dAw ... re=related

I haven't listened to it much, to be honest. "The Work Which Transforms God" was just striking to me because of how unique it was, while I remember Ultima Thulee sounding a bit like all that other stuff. As I said though, I haven't really invested enough time in it to have an opinion.

I haven't liked it much in the past, but it's starting to grow on me.

By no means am I calling dungeon synth mature, especially not in comparison to classical. My only reason for saying it's a bit more mature than black metal is that it mostly lacks the aggression. If you got into black metal in your mid-twenties, then I agree we'll probably have a very different perspective on this, but I tend to associate a lot of the black metal feelings with hate, anger, aggression, and angst in general. For me, that was all well and good when I had raging hormones, but even then the primary appeal was the atmosphere. Now that I'm older, I find I can't stomach most new black metal, but I still have hunger for that dark, fantastical, and decayed atmosphere in music, and I think dungeon synth focuses purely on that, without all that explosive testosterone getting in the way. So in speaking of maturity, I was by no means saying that people should 'grow up and stop listening to metal,' but rather metal might just naturally not have the same effect as it did when they were younger, purely because of the aggression, and so dungeon synth might be able to provide a similar atmosphere, though on a much greater level since atmosphere is the focus.

Of course, classical is absolutely more 'adult' and 'respectable.' There's no comparison between it and ds/bm. It's something I do enjoy, and plan to delving into a great deal at some point in my life, but I think its goals are quite different from these genres.

That Bach piece was nice. On a related note, and sorry if everyone already knows about this, but "Switched-On Bach" might appeal to dungeon synth listeners who just enjoy the sound of synths in general. It's essentially famous pieces from Bach played on a moog synthesizer.

at the risk of sounding like a moron, what exactly is dungeon synth in terms of definition? I know many examples of it, as confirmed in this thread, and some of the albums discussed here have been in my collection for years. But where do they get "dungeon" from? Does it mean these artists record all their work in their basement during the day? Or is it based off music you would hear in videogames with "dungeon" type levels (Legend of Zelda being the best example here). I just don't feel like reading the whole thread to know if it's been pointed out already.

Compcat might be able to answer that more clearly, but I think it does indeed stem partially from dungeon-oriented video gaming references, as well as from Mortiis, who labeled some of his early cassettes 'dark dungeon music.'

It's a genre based on intros for black metal albums.

this...

the term dungeon synth is then just used to give the genre a term apart from just sth like "ambient". Besides Mortiis label just fits the music perfectly (imo)

I'm familiar with Mistigo Varggoth and Lord Wind, and quite fond of the latter. I' not familiar with this genre title though, and don't find anything synthy about Lord Wind? At least not from the albums i've heard. What are some of the other bands in this genre, and are any of them actually synthy? I listen to old electronica, space synth and a fair bit of synth pop, so i'm interested in finding out more about this stuff.

DRD, check out Depressive Silence's Demo III and Myrrdin's Glomung Ofer Se Weald. Very representative and very accessible stuff! Good shit. You mentioned you're wise to Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra. Have you heard Midnight Fullmoon?

Wongraven's Fjelltronen is another choice selection, very nice album, though it's a bit more multi-instrumental and isn't completely synth-dominated. I'd suggest this album as a good starting place for further exploration.

Personally I feel this kind of high/low dichotomy is an oversimplification, but comparing across styles or genres is always tricky. That said I don't think you'll find Part's work described as "complex" or "intellectual" very often; I'd wager a good deal of (non-tech/prog) metal acts routinely write more complex music than Part. I don't mean this as a condemnation of Part's work - complexity simply isn't his aim.

A related topic: classical music that conjures a similar feeling to dungeon synth. Gierr Tveitt's work sometimes fits the bill, I think. It draws heavily from Nordic folk melodies and mythology and is in an interesting Romantic style. The Naxos releases even use Kittelsen art:
http://www.amazon.com/Geirr-Tveitt-Hund ... 719&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Tveitt-Hundred-Ha ... 719&sr=8-6

I think i have heard Midnight Fullmoon before, but i believe it was on a hard drive i broke a couple years ago. I will have to look into some of these others.

I've been in a Dungeon Synth mood for a couple of weeks, and been trawling my hard-drive for suitable listening. One album I have rediscovered is Akhenaton's "Divine Symphonies" album, in which the bombastic synth work totally outweighs the Black Metal components. Has anyone else heard it, and if so, what are your thoughts? Could this be classed as borderline DS?

I listened to this Akhenaton album you mention, and I really do agree about it being borderline dungeon synth. It was a very nice listen, though I think it's somewhat important to assert dungeon synth's independence, so that it can finally leave the nest of black metal and define itself on its own terms. Perhaps a rejection of black metal for its "scene" popularity and insubstantiality (these days) is what's called for, similar to the approach taken by the Norwegians in the early 90's against death metal.

I don't think prescriptivism is the way to go. Dungeon synth's existence is proof of the virtue of creative isolation. If you think modern BM is insubstantial, I would suggest that this is because so many artists are content to play by rules established by others instead of pursuing something personal (I think your first album is a strong example of personal, individual BM, by the way). I think introducing some sort of oppositional "true dungeon synth" doctrine would encourage the same kind of creative stagnation.

I came here to post this: elsewhere on this forum someone posted this quote from a recent Burzum interview that I think belongs in this thread:

http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/2011_ ... izer.shtml

I'm not sure I agree with your argument, but it's really made me reconsider my position. Of course, keeping this "trve" approach to the genre can only lead to stagnation in the long-run, I still think it's a useful tool in this early stage of dungeon synth's life, at least to give it a fighting chance to stand on its own, otherwise when black metal dies DS will certainly die with it.

I think that Varg quote truly does reveal the same spirit which motivates dungeon synth, and even H.P. Lovecraft when it comes to the nostalgia for the fantasies in youth. The "reeking bog" is particularly interesting, since it is obviously negative, and yet it is that position he longs to recapture. I think there is a very strong parallel for that same contradiction in this kind of music, a sort of exalted decadence, that the most profound fantasies only seem to be found in a state of madness or degradation.

I know and listen to this music, but never delved into it, so this thread gave me some cool starting points. Gonna play some Dark Souls and listen to it.

This thread is great. Ever since I heard the Agalloch tracks "The Misshapen Steed", "Foliorum Viridium", and "A Poem By Yeats", as well as Scholomance's "Snowfall", I've been looking for more music like that. It was hard to find stuff because this genre didn't have a name that I knew of. Some people called those tracks "ambient", which didn't make much sense to me because a lot of ambient sounds like someone made a recording of their air conditioner. I've been into Mortiis and Arcana for a few years, but now I've got a lot of stuff to check out. So far my favorite is Depressive Silence. That's exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. What other dungeon synth bands are the most similar to them?

I would suggest Gothmog and Myrrdin.

Yeah, the Myrrdin album is great. Probably the best DS album I've heard overall, to be honest.

Anyone with a strong interest in dungeon synth would do well to check out The Eye's Supremacy. This Blut Aus Nord side project is quite heavy on the keys, and this album in particular contains some extremely good synth instrumentals that would be jewels in the crown of any dungeon synth album. Give it a listen; on top of the instrumentals you'll be taking in some excellent and rather unique black metal you might otherwise miss out on.

After reading through the topic, mostly everything I would have had to say on the subject has been brought up already. The only thing I can think of to contribute - though it probably also doesn't qualify - is the Autopsia album "The Silence of the Lamb (Waldsinfonie)", which I picked up years ago simply because it was cheap and looked intriguing. I know practically nothing about this project, but they probably come more from the post-industrial angle. A lot of it reminds me strongly of what little "dungeon synth" I know though, although there's also an obvious baroque influence going on. I've only found this track on youtube, not really that representative of the whole album though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z38RLnVZZbA

I also noticed that Mortiis' "The Stargate" has the Cold Meat Industry logo inside the booklet, even though the album was issued by Earache. Thought that was pretty interesting.

Wow, this thread takes me way back. I listened to all these bands about ten years ago. Loved the Mortiis side projects, Wongraven, Neptune Towers, etc. One more divergence--'outer space'-themed ambient coming from the black metal scene. There's the aforementioned Neptune Towers, The Saturnus Mission from Arud, and the mix of BM/ambient from Mussorgski...can anyone else refresh my memory on other examples?

Listening to Dark Ages' A Chronicle of the Plague again. It's a pretty damn good album, and stylistically places itself perfectly between dungeon synth and ambient in a little niche where it subtly escapes direct allegiance to either genre. Or... perhaps it evokes both with equal strength. Hmm. In any case, great stuff... dungeon synth fans would do well to give it a look. It's not often composers can use such extreme repetition without the results feeling simply tedious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0ve7NkG4g