Photography by Nocturnal Dissonance
For experimental or niche musical genres that mostly exist on the internet it’s really exciting to be there when it all spills into the real world. Fests or events like Texas Dungeon Siege create a focal point for that to happen. – Scott Brackett (Slime Tamer)
I am at the Pie Shop in DC a few days after the Texas Dungeon Siege (TXDS). I took off the entire week after the fest since I knew I would be going to a Wednesday night show after a weekend of staying up absurdly late. I’m also not ready to join the real world after spending an entire weekend in the realms of the unreal. Yesterday I took the entire day to play the Oblivion remaster since all weekend I heard about it from other musicians who were playing it or trying to avoid playing it since they have too much shit to do. The Dungeon Ov Thee Nation Invasion tour is a multi week loop around the US which started as the close of TXDS. The tour is very much the second phase of TXDS which sees the international acts like Amn (UK/Greece), Silencio Permanente (Argentina), Orcus (UK), and Flickers From the Fen (UK) traveling across the US. The tour was orchestrated by Anthony of Engraven Records / Apoxupon who was also providing support for half of the dates. This DC show was being supported by Ripping Headache Promotions which is the premiere metal booking for DC and surrounding areas. This isn’t the first dungeon synth (DS) show put on by Ripping Headache as throughout the last year or so the attendance for weekday DS shows has steadily increased. I keep asking the international acts what the best and worst food they had in the US thus far mainly as a joke but also out of pure curiosity. As of writing this article the running for best food was crab legs in DC and the worst being grilled cheese in Iowa. I make mention of this fact because there are so many improbable things that I am experiencing, mostly that dungeon synth has a US tour stopping in DC and that venue has the best seafood according to the Greeks.
The Pie Shop show is an epilogue to TXDS and evidence of a growing DS scene which extended outside of TXDS. Some of the crowd were also in Texas but for the most part everyone here is a part of the local quilt of alternative communities which look like a melange of punk, metal, goth, RPG, and just weirdo scenes. Some are in street clothes or patch jackets while others buy merch dressed in stylish cloaks. I finally managed to talk to Anthony, the organizer for TXDS and the Dungeon Invasion tour, outside on the patio of the venue. Anthony is busy these days and probably can’t respond to all my inquiries online as I write this article. The phone number he gave me to text during the fest went to a landline and I don’t know whose fault that was, most likely mine. I’m grateful for the few hours on this patio and nice weather and an air that smells like legal cannabis to ask him anything about this article. He asked me to come down to Texas just to be there and document the 2025 festival. He also trusts me to write about things that I saw and doesn’t need to oversee anything. I am grateful for the fact I got the time to travel to Texas and be with a group of people who seemed to enjoy me photographing what they do. I am also grateful for the fact that tonight I get to chill with creative people who seem eternally relaxed despite orchestrating one of the biggest events in DS’ history.
I knew from a very early time I wanted to come back to Texas to write about this event. Last year I was with my wife in Austin attending a friend’s wedding. TXDS was happening at the same weekend and by a twist of fate got to attend two of its three nights. This year by some other twist of fate I found myself in Austin for four nights staying at one of the artist Airbnbs along with a stupid amount of people, most who I knew online and I had already written about for years. I have been documenting the DS scene for quite some time and this year was perhaps the first time I came close to one of my dreams of being some sort of synth gonzo journalist like Hunter S. Thompson or Lester Bangs just with people in elf ears who play experimental music. This live DS coverage has been a new development and something other people have adopted and adapted in the mid 2020’s. Many musicians learned very quickly how to play live in a community who are receptive to learning. Other figures like vendors and visual artists quickly learned how to transport all of their gear and attend multiple events to sell merchandise. I had to learn very quickly how to stay up for four nights with a schedule that looked like a joke the first time I saw it.
I initially thought TXDS was a copycat event designed to cash in on the post pandemic live DS craze which seemed like a niche market at best. After attending TXDS in 2024 and talking to the people involved, I learned that the Texas dungeon synth scene was more of an arm of an already vibrant and alternative music scene which encompassed not only Austin but the greater Texas landscape. TXDS is just an expression of a larger network of art being made at times in opposition to the encroaching corporate and tech sprawl which consumes its independent communities. Outside of SXSW which seems to take over the town every year, the spirit of Austin which drove its initial weirdness still exists just not in any traditional venue or official capacity. Offbeat places like a fantasy tavern on the outskirts of town and a goth nightclub in a place with zero free parking now are the decentralized hearts of a weird community. One of the slogans for TXDS was “Come Seek Us Out” which hung under a medieval looking logo of the Buc-ee’s convenience store. This absurd combination seems to be the event’s ethos with irreverence mixed with an esoteric call for people to find their own meaning beyond what is initially offered. The fact that so many people are here to see what I used to describe as an online micro genre is testament to longevity of the odd and how intoxicating it can be when consumed without hesitation.
The Tiny Minotaur (the day venue) offered what was perhaps the most expected DS fantasy experience. Located in a sleepy residential area surrounded by food truck parks and bars in renovated gas stations the Tiny Minotaur looked like any other residence with a high fence just now with the addition of a costumed gatekeeper. Once inside you are free to wander a small compound complete with kitchen, bar, free sci fi book library, and a garden which were also tiny stages for the acts to play music. It is hard not to get caught up by the enchantment this venue offers as the only thing which broke immersion was peering beyond the fence line at the apartment complexes and business billboards. Even real world politics which affected the venue (the fantasy currency used by the venue have been affected by the US tariffs) were explained through fiction with allusions to a mythical tyrannical monarchy which imposed kingdom tariffs. TXDS at the Tiny Minotaur makes a great story and makes it easy for people to make connections between the music and its atmosphere. It was also a place to forget and escape.
The threat of rain hung over the entire weekend and The Tiny Minotaur was mostly outdoors except for a makeshift corner where people sat on the floor and watched performances. Here the fest featured most of the experimental acts who were fine with a reduced sound system and intimate setting. Acts like Fernmage thrived in a place like this with the sounds of bird whistles (which were passed out of the crowd beforehand) filled with air under a lush canopy of ivy. Other acts like Earthen Shield turned off all lights and played a melancholic set illuminated only by the ambient streetlamps outside. While this setting was perfect for idyllic acts, it also provided a stage for the experimental acts who played under overcast skies or occasionally a merciless barrage of sunshine. This venue had the most number of acts I was completely unaware of as it seems to be a showcase for local leftfield electronic or the performances from acts with barely have any social media presence. While last year’s festival took place entirely in this costumed globe of fantasy, this year broke beyond its firmament.
I was initially not thrilled with the prospect of two venues, mainly because I am an eternal dad when it comes to parking and will make mention of it again. With 44 acts which competed with space, time, and perhaps noise ordinance, the Tiny Minotaur couldn’t accommodate the entire scope of the event. While the intimate garden atmosphere was perfect for some acts, others demanded a larger sound and alternative experience and be broadcast to a catacomb of patrons engulfed in darkness. There were other acts, complete with a keytar which demanded a bigger set up. Over the past few years goth and goth adjacent scenes have been growing in cities with DS being its aesthetic neighbor next store. It seems to be logical that the event would be located in a goth club for its night events and just my luck that everything would be near pitch black and with increasingly difficult light for photographs.
Elysium (the night venue) offered an immersive sound where you could recline in black leather couches in almost near darkness while listening to fantasy ambient. The vendors spread out across pool tables and bar tops like some sort of grim bazaar which offered new black shirts for the discerning black shirt collectors. It was a scene of quite chaos as you couldn’t tell who was a vendor and who was a customer as everyone sort of blended into each other. People sold out of bags and traded zines and moved around the venue dodging deep steps which threatened to twist ankles for anyone not paying attention. One of the bathrooms offered just a tough to piss in with years of graffiti to stare at and take one’s mind off of the lack of privacy. This DS show looked oddly familiar to other genres of music just with a few more chainmail coifs and maybe more shirts with dragons on it. If anything the nights at Elysium looked like if you were given a prompt to combine a handful of communities like punk, goth, metal, and Renaissance fair actors and throw them into a weekend long event. It showed all of us that this genre of music, wherever it is, isn’t relegated to one space; rather it exists in various locales and offers something new each time. This wasn’t just an online micro-genre suddenly given a live venue to play rather an absurd house built on the foundation of underground music.
Outside people vaped and smoked amid the chaos of The Red River District which felt like a surreal combination of fraternity row and off the strip Las Vegas. We laughed at the self driving taxis circling the area while the local psych rock bar The 13th Floor added reverb and guitar solos to the landscape of sound. Along with the lack of free parking and the hyper competitive food trucks, the Elysium reminded us that this genre was not background music rather a spectacle that demanded attention. There was no passive ambience here rather the coexistence among university students who were going to clubs or people carrying around giant penis balloons for bachelorette parties. After midnight, locales started to wander in and in the back half buzzed patrons were greeted by a weirdness which we all just became used to after years. Some were dismissive and were there for discount drinks while others were enthralled with something they never knew existed but knew they always wanted. Perhaps this is why DS refused to just be an internet micro-genre as enough people believed in its magic and its place not just in fantasy but in a strange reality.
It would be improbable for me to photograph and write about every act over the course of this weekend. At times the schedule felt adversarial to my sleeping schedule but even if I did document each performance it would feel saturated. What I can say is there were four to five different concerts happening over the course of the weekend from international acts which toured the US to the headlining US acts like Wraith Knight, Seregost, Hillsfar, Vale Minstrel, Frostclad, and Jenn Taiga. There were even more who felt like soon to be headliners like Magic Hilt, Emberwilde, Forwyrd, and Chipped Topaz. These shows interspersed with the completely unhinged noise acts and out of nowhere delights which played out of suitcases and sat on the dirt in the Tiny Minotaur while they poured music out to the people gathered in the garden. There were even underground favorites, like Nahadoth, which packed tiny corners of the fantasy tavern and offered a full scale concert in a space no bigger than a bedroom. For every act that was just mentioned there were two others that were just as good and offered a memorable experience. This wasn’t just one concert rather a symposium of curiosity which much like its music meant something different for everyone in attendance.
TXDS For me it was approaching everyday not knowing what I was going to see or what sort of weirdness I was going to get into. The experience at the show and at the artist Airbnb created a unique gathering of not just musicians, vendors, fans, and other attendees rather a collective of artists who all had their own way of responding to the event. If something can be said which unified all of the attendees this weekend was their endless well of interest in music and seeking out new things. For a genre which seems to be full of socially inept fantasy dorks, this weekend sure had a lot of social people who were willing to trade zines, dress like a demon, stay in a large house with strangers, fly across the globe alone, or play noise out of a suitcase. It was a group of people throwing their hands up and saying “sure why the fuck not?”. It was pandemonium and tore a hole in reality allowing the unreal to wash out on the desert floor.
Anthony and the greater scene of Texas artists are making things happen and bringing people together. Over the course of the weekend I heard the start of collaborations, splits, albums, and projects which probably would have never happened unless everyone was in the same space for four days. The fact I met Nocturnal Dissonance and exchanged information led to the pictures being apart of this article. It was a weekend I felt like the things I even did, photograph and write about music, was valued by the community. This event felt like a conference and probably something like what SXSW felt like ages ago before things became a logistical headache for the locals. It was energizing to be apart of collective of creative people using art to respond to art. This is art made in opposition to things becoming expected and understandable as it championed high strangeness in a strange land in perhaps the strangest of times.
The pictures for this article were provided by Nocturnal Dissonance who shot the entire weekend on a Sony Cybershot S650 point and shoot camera which looked like it was something I would be carrying at a party in the mid 2000’s. Actually it was from 2007 so this is probably more true than not. Over the weekend I saw many as well as others disposable cameras, Polaroids, and vintage 35mm film. It seems like they wanted to capture the weekend but on archaic technology as if the weekend’s enchanting atmosphere called for something more tangible and ritualized. Much like last year’s article with film photography by Will Mecca, I wanted to feature things which seem out of place in the current time period and reside in ether since DS feels haunted in its aesthetics and conjures specters of the past. The lead image to me feels like it could have been taken at any point over the last three decades and no one would know the difference. This weekend felt like we were un-moored from time and space and everyone was just content with the disconnect from the current timeline.
Since the Northeast Dungeon Siege I have been thinking about what makes people travel to these events which seems at odds with the perception of this genre being a solitary genre. We are approaching the fact that the live DS scene is almost as old as its online revival period as well as its initial 1990s black metal / dark ambient period. We are experiencing history in real time and when one pauses to reflect things seem evermore unreal. TXDS for me was a social event with people I had interacted with, some for over a decade, only online and then this weekend in person like there was no transition. For all of my worries about staying up late and being around a house full of strangers, the importance of this event superseded any social anxiety. This weekend confirmed for me that something is happening and we are all aware of it but don’t really know what it is. It is DS but also its mixed with feelings and attitude which could have only come from the past 5 years.
I talked with Vaelastrasz after her set at the DC show. She is the one I have been following around taking pictures at each show from DS events to goth record release parties. I ask her what it is going to take to make DCDS a thing. At one time I felt like this would just be a joke since both she and I share a sentiment to not be serious 99% of the time but each successful DS fest makes this joke more of a reality. NEDS, TXDS, GLDS, OVDS, DSW, and a host of other localized DS acronyms are the growing tide to a wave of independent music that is going to be fun as hell and weird as fuck for everyone involved. TXDS is a harbinger of something that is happening that I don’t think we have a name for yet. I usually like to know everything that is going on but I feel there are sometimes you just have to embrace not knowing and relish its experience. We don’t know where we are going but I’m sure there will be familiar faces when we get there.
If you would like to see my photos from the fest as well as a collage of audio I took you can head here.
Shoutout to @indole_noise for also photographing the event as well as using Ted Weems’ “Deep In The Heart Of Texas” in the opening of their set. It was stuck in my head all weekend.
Below are some quotes from people involved in US tour on their thoughts regarding the events. Some are about food others about the music. I didn’t really have strict prompts rather wanted them to just share their thoughts on probably one of the weirdest times of their musical careers.
There’s a coffee shop in Austin we visited every morning. On Monday, the barista noticed my shirt and commented, “Nice shirt.” He was also wearing a black t-shirt. “Did you go to the Siege?” he asked. “We played at the Siege.” “NO WAY!” We talked about his journey with electronic music and his recent exploration of dungeon synth, including the gear he uses. For us, TXDS revealed how dungeon synth is evolving beyond just a niche gathering of misfits in wizard hats, chainmail, and corpse paint into an art form connecting with a broader audience. More importantly, the scene is intentional about upholding its core principle of inclusivity. This is a lot more meaningful than sticking social support emojis next to someone’s socials, because it’s underpinned by the medium of creative expression. – Georgies (Amn)
Being fairly new to the DS universe, the first thing I noticed was a strong sense of fraternity—people from all over the globe coming together in communion for this massive event, sharing and celebrating their passion. I immediately felt welcomed and part of it. A special praise goes to the immense amount of sweat and blood Anthony poured into delivering such an epic festival. – Marcos (Silencio Pemananente)
Best food: Bento from Koriente in Austin (shout-out Assorted Potions). Worst food: Grilled Cheese Sandwich from a rural gas stop in Iowa. The locals gave me the stink eye and the sandwich tasted like farts. KAP: What does txds mean to you? The world, truly. Not only because seeing artists I’ve admired for years + discovering new ones is a dream come true but because I got to hang out with them all. The communal aspect of DS is the absolute best I’ve ever come across in any scene and that is on full display at TXDS. – Flickers From The Fen
Texas Dungeon siege for me was all about the community. Having that many artists all together for one weekend was an incredible feeling of comradery that is simply unmatched. All sieges have their own vibe and texas was heavily focused on the community. I made so many new friends and met with even more old friends and we got to hang out for 4 days. It’s an experience I will hold on to forever. – Orcus
