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.

Comments

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

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

This album answers an incredibly important question: What if Rick Deckard was a goth? A goth replicant that could pass the Voight-Kampff test easily. More importantly, it provides a stunning backdrop to the writing I am supposed to be doing, but keep avoiding. French composer James Kent has always been something of a polarizing figure. Much of his earlier work has been very HOTLINE MIAMI style synthwave. This is most definitely NOT THAT. Instead you a weird robot sex soundtrack - a post-punk mood piece cloaked in goth rock nihilism and sexual malevolence. Gritty, misanthropic, but still atmospheric and ambient, this is some nice stuff! Lustful Sacraments by PERTURBATOR

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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