Forest Shrine - Forest Shrine

Okay, so Dungeon Synth is a weird weird weird genre. It revolves around black metal musicians making Enya tribute albums, essentially. Taking black metal's primitive, ethereal and, often medieval aesthetics and applying them to ambient soundscapes is the name of the game. Classic dungeon synth releases focus largely on recreating medieval musical styles and textures with synthesizers.

More modern dungeon synth branches out a bit, into more traditional black metal preoccupations like forests, hating monotheists, and wearing leather. However the genre's original ethos of foreboding eeriness remains an important foundation.

A. Virdeus is the person behind Forest Shrine, a much more ambient and dungeon synth offshoot of his Werendia project. Whereas Werendia (which will appear here promptly) is an atmospheric or ambient black metal project, full of snarling vocals and guitar work, Forest Shrine is pure synth madness. Forest flavored synth madness of course.

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Agriculture - Agriculture

a While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide. That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

2022 Year In Review

Yeah, I have been MIA for 18 months. So what? You don't pay for this blog, I do. And I've been really busy starting my permaculture farm / goat cult in the abandoned mountains of northern Spain. Now that things are appropriately sustainable and grim, I am back to vomit my opinions on music all over the internet some more. Let's dive back into things with a wrap up of 2022. Here are my favorite-ish albums of the year, along with why they are superlative. Best Aural Approximation of a Mental Health Crisis Chat Pile - God's Country Would you like to know what it sounds like to be stuck in a trailer in the middle of nowhere USA with none of the drugs you need to forget exactly how terribly and awfully fucked your life is? Are you interested in turning the collective despair of a small town poisoned by unregulated mining and refining into a howl of impotent protest? Would you like to peel back the facade of "faith, family, farm" to gaze at the raw and bloody dis...

Dødsferd - Skotos

Raw atmospheric black metal it it's sun soaked Mediterranean best. Wait... That's not right. Oh, but it is. For 20 years, Greece has been the home of Dødsferd since it's beginning as a one-man side project. Now, 10 albums, as many splits and EPs, and five comps, two new songs are available. Packaged with a re-release of the landmark album 'Diseased Remnants of a Dying World', what you have here is the pinnacle of what raw atmo-black can be. A full LP of this would easily be Album of the Year. I can still hope right? Skotos (Atmospheric Black Metal) by DØDSFERD (Greece)

Trumpet of Amdusias

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