Midnight Fullmoon

Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra was a side project of Knjaz Varggoth from Nokturnal Mortum, which took on a more ambient approach to the symphonic black metal sound that NM pioneered. The project released two demos in 1996 before releasing their debut album the next year titled "Midnight Fullmoon", or Midnight Foolmoon if you're looking at the Bandcamp version. And as far as dark ambient goes, this is a very strong album.

Starting off with the first track "Awakening of the Secrets of the Dreaming Woods", it's very minimalistic in its composition. There is a deep droning sound that plays in the background while an eerie chant plays in the foreground. The voices are clearly synthesized and haven't exactly aged the best, but this cheap and old quality is part of the charm. It's instrumentals don't offer any complex or technical marvels, but with its basic playthrough, it does offer a huge atmosphere that simulates the idea of being in a mystical forest. And this atmosphere remains strong throughout the entire album. You have tracks like "Dracul - The Triumph of the Blooded Moon" that take on a darker, more vampiric turn with its orchestral-like keyboards, and "Algol's Black Lights" that lean more towards electronic music with its groovy and upbeat drumming in the second-half. But probably my favorite track on this album is the last track "The Majestic Flight Above the Burning Churches of the Ancient Oriana Land". The main instrument is a melodic, yet haunting tune that plays throughout the entire track while mystic and spatial effects play in the background, giving you the perfect feeling of flying above Oriana.

While this album might not be impressive composition-wise, like Ildjarn's "Landscapes", part of its charm is the effective atmosphere it creates, and I think this album gets it right. That, plus offering a bit of variety with the tones and sounds, and I'd say that this is a great album overall. If you're looking for some nice dark ambience from the deep forests of Ukraine, then this is an album that you have to check out.

The late 90s period of the Ukrainian black metal scene that was made up of iconic bands like Nokturnal Mortum and Lucifugum had a lot of neat surprises in terms of side and solo projects by various members within. Vetche, the psychedelic, hypnotic dark ambient project, which was a side project of Lucifugum's members was my favorite, but I also appreciated drummer Munruthel's first album, which had some cool folk elements to its ambient cover that really immersed me in that eastern European setting of many centuries ago. But Knjaz Varggoth's Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra project definitely commands respect and for a long time, I was only aware that he made that 70+ minute metal album under this project, oblivious to the hidden gems of these dark ambient albums, such as "Midnight Fullmoon" .

Anyway, "Midnight Fullmoon" checks all the boxes for good dark ambient music. It delivers on atmosphere, immerses you into a certain setting (depending on the track), has a decent bit of variety in the album, and to boot, even has a cool cover art, which looks like an ocean of trees under an actual ocean that shrouds a full moon - quite mysterious and open to many interpretations. It's a great introduction to those not too familiar with the "dungeon synth" approach but also great for connoisseurs who missed this one before.

From the moment the album starts with "Awakening of the Secrets of the Dreaming Woods", I'm transported to an ancient world - think pre-Christianity Eastern Europe where the world is a lot quieter and its people are more connected through nature via their pagan beliefs. While it appears to be a repetitive track, it's still quite captivating as you want to have that time to zone out for a while. Throughout the album there are even vibes of cyberpunk elements in it - deep, bass-like electronic components that are highly reminiscent of the first Terminator movie. It sounds weird but it's really fitting when you look at the whole product as it adds a bit of tension to the passages. This is is enhanced further with the really odd and psychedelic "Algol's Black Lights", a strange, futuristic track that is filled with frantic, electronic vibrating percussions.

Despite only seven tracks here, each track offers something new and worth coming back to. From the more solemn "Raining Darkness of the Forestland Midnight" that leaves me in solitude to the more triumphant "Dracul - The Triumph of the Blooded Moon" that puts me in a medieval castle to the more mysterious forest of "By the Wisdom Roots of a Sorsery", I get a lot of different vibes and feelings from this album. It's a real shame Varggoth stopped making music like this, especially since the instrumental interludes and introductions in recent Nokturnal Mortum albums have been pretty lackluster (the loud horn has been overdone), but at least one can appreciate this obscure release relative to what the big players have done in the early Ukrainian black metal scene. "Midnight Fullmoon" is the perfect album to zone out in and get lost in the music or listen carefully to pick up all the elements that you have to focus on beneath the atmosphere. And with how each track is executed, you can use your own imagination to see what type of mood or atmosphere Varggoth was trying to convey.

If you’ve heard of Knjaz Varggoth, the mastermind behind Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, then it’s probably as the vocalist for Ukraine folk/black metal band Nokturnal Mortum, and if perhaps you’ve heard of the now defunct side project Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra then it’s probably for his infamous sophomore effort, The Key to the Gates of the Apocalypse, a black metal album featuring one single seventy two minute track. Prior to this monster of a release though, the first album under the Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra name was Midnight Fullmoon, a dungeon synth album that pushes boundaries for the genre, incorporating elements of psychedelia and even hints of EDM into the dark and dusty avenues that we usually see dungeon synth go down. It’s an enigmatic release and one of the best of the genre’s early nineties output.

The first track is pure dungeon synth, eleven minutes of a choral synth melody taking the lead, with brooding bass tones and some psychedelic electronics courtesy of some analog synth knob twiddling. With the sounds of running water and various nature sounds it does have a naturalistic feel to it, and even before the aforementioned water the somewhat lo-fi production does give it an oceanic feel also. There’s some variation where an oscillating psychedelic drone takes center stage in a piece of dramatic music with a slight Dead Can Dance vibe to the choral melody and percussive beat.

Even with these psychedelic tones it’s still the closest piece here to the classic dungeon synth sound, with Raining Darkness of the Forestland Midnight experimenting with some string tones reminding of the classic days of Tangerine Dream’s longform experimentations on the brilliant Zeit album, with traces of Rubycon also in the choral synths, minus the modulated beats of course. Dracul – The Triumph of the Blooded Moon, returns to more of the dramatic brass synths evoking Dead Can Dance once again in another piece that combines the sound of early Tangerine Dream with that of the dingy and dramatic classic analog tones, whilst The Majestic Flight Above the B.G C.S of the Ancient Oriana Land has more freeform psychedelic tones against the fixed bright celestial sounding melody and fuzzy bass drones in a floaty spacey piece.

The weirdest and best track by far though is Algol’s Black Lights, starting of with some EDM style synth modulation and kicking into more of the floaty oceanic synth tones in the background before some strange psychedelic washes of synth oscillation float through also in a track that’s as far away from the dusty black metal intro sound as the genre gets in an energetic yet dreamy piece.

Midnight Fullmoon is not just another dungeon synth album, and with it’s psychedelic tendencies, and nods to Tangerine Dream and Dead Can Dance while still having that old school dusty dungeon synth vibe, it’s an album that’s a real standout in the early nineties scene.

Originally written for swirlsofnoise.com

One enters a mystical forest and wanders dreamily. Thoughts drift in and out, the silent spaces carried by an unnoticeable thread of melody alongside the sound of ambient vintage keyboard effects such as water, wind, birds, and horse-gallops. This is the awakening of the ancient spirit, the long and pleasant meandering into the dreaming woods. One can sense that this place is confined despite its fantastic atmosphere, as if these woods exist in the darkness of an unconscious mind, one who has, for a brief relieving moment, forgotten the pain and suffering of the waking modern world. This is music best complimenting a creative activity, wandering contemplation, or some other imaginative distraction, as the music is too repetitive and dull for the foreground of the mind.

With the raining darkness the music takes on a more sinister edge, as if the dreaming woods have suddenly grown darker, and one senses hungry eyes peering in from the shadows. A heartbeat is heard in background, reminding the listener of his mortality, threatening him for daring to tread so deep into the inner realms. Possibly it is a warning to the dreamer, that if he continues through the dank lonely realm of 'dungeon synth' that he runs the risk of getting permanently lost, his sanity melting under the raining darkness.

Then the triumph comes in, and one feels they are in control of the place. The honor of the explorer, as he has comes to understand the strange fantasy around him... and yet those momentary feelings of triumph always seem to fade off into uncertainty. The wanderer has faced the darkness, and feels that within it they are given supernatural power, like the figure of Dracula, lord of the dark, the decaying, the dead: the lost nobility that remains proud despite being cold and lifeless in the black and musty castles, lit by moonlight.

And then we are given a glimpse of sorcery, strange and dark magic. It has a chaotic sound that makes satisfying use of the old synths, and one can certainly picture colorful spells exploding in the exotic chamber of some half-mad wizard. The musician was clearly experimenting with the magic sounds of 90's keyboards in the same way that a magician would experiment with the strange incantations and recipes found in a discovered grimoire, sometimes fitting the music of the character, sometimes exploding dissonantly and destroying what order is to be found in such a cluttered, relic-strewn abode.

Algol's Black Lights seems to be descending deeper into the psyche of the dreaming hermit, to the point where space and supernatural archetypes take larger form than the pictures of the dungeon fantasy. This is the dream within the dream, an atmosphere too strange to get a strong handle on. It's a weak experiment, not conveying the thick fantasy of the overall vision of the album with as much success as the other songs. Likely it was just a filler, added to reach the magic number of seven that completes the album. It is tolerable and easy to ignore if you listen distantly, but its weakness will be readily apparent to any close listeners. Perhaps it could function as a reasonably well-done interlude, causing the listener to lose his atmospheric bearing and thereby refresh his palette.

With the dying sun, we see the ending of time, the ending of the dream, the exit that all must take. It is a simple goodbye to both life and the fantastic inner worlds that can be created through it.

The majestic flight takes a somewhat more real-world stance, utilizing the image of "burning churches" in its title. Fleeing the churches ablaze, into the land of Oriana, is a statement of escaping the real world, or at least the real world that has been created through modernism. It is a clear decision that the morality and symbols of modern man do not satiate a longing spirit. Sanctuary can no longer be found in the house of God. In fact, it is the world created by those that live under God's roof that has sent us fleeing into the darkness of the inner sanctuary, the dream-fantasy, the only place where real magic still exists. And so the churches are burnt, literally or metaphorically, and we flee into new lands, literally or metaphorically, all that is certain is we cannot stay in the world of common man in the 21st century, in the dehumanizing land of a million granite phalluses honoring Jehovah and his dollar.

Overall, the album is a very good example of standard dungeon synth. It is lo-fi, made up entirely by vintage keyboards, is shrouded in obscurity, has strong themes of fantasy, and is driven entirely by atmosphere. It is not the best dungeon synth by any stretch, and it really doesn't do much that is new, but it has captured the vision perfectly, and contributed to the rather small catalogue of this unknown music in a way that could only be done by someone who truly understands what it is about.

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