At that time I was into black metal music and fantasy stuff so, when I discovered this kind of sounds (Mortiis, Cernunnos Woods, Pazuzu…) a sparkle came in mind and I decided immediately that I would have created my own project. In my head this music seemed to be the perfect blend from the obscure side of black metal and the fantastic worlds that I loved to read about. The result was my first demo tape MCCXXXI (1997). This kind of music wasn’t so popular at that time and most of the time it was considered as a side of black metal or simply ambient music. To find something similar you had to be into some obscure genres and dig through albums, ‘zines and sometimes by word of mouth. But I dug man, I dug a lot and something cool started to spin on my stereo: Mortiis, Cernunnos Woods, Pazuzu, Dargaard, Dark Sanctuary, Vond, Cintecele Diavolui, Summoning, Die Verbannten Kinder Evas… There were probably other projects on my rotation but these were my main listenings. When I finished my first demo tape MCCXXXI in 1997 I decided to put it on tape. I remember I spent hours and hours to duplicate 100 copies of it on my double tape deck at home and other hours printing and cutting the homemade j-cards. Due to my presence in the black metal scene I was in contact with many distros and I traded or sold all my tapes soon. Same happened with my other 2 demo tapes. This was the regular way to spread your music in the 90’s so I did.
Music is my way to create my own world, a world made piece by piece each album I did. All my DS projects are related and setted in the same world and if you listen carefully and pay attention to the titles you can spot the connections. If you are intrigued by this idea, I invite you to listen all my projects: Arcana Liturgia, Grim Horn, Osmord and Acid Crypt.I’m slowly building an alternative dimension where sometimes I like to get refuge from the society, from normal life and from stressful daylife. Even though It’s my own world, I like share it with people so the listeners are invited to immerse themselves into it and make it yours, becoming part of the whole story. I was an avid bookwormer at that time (now I have less time) and I remember the emotion those books gave to me. Something that changed my life forever, something that is nowdays with me, in my heart and helped me to grow up.
Lord of Time (Arcana Liturgia)
2025
Dark Visions
Dungeon synth has a complicated history. The bedroom ambient genre has its name comes from a blog created by Andrew Werdna in 2011 based around decades old music he was finding on MP3 blogs. This music was a collection of darkwave, neoclassical, dark ambient, medieval, and instrumental music mostly from underground European artists during the 1990s. The music was connected to the larger black metal scenes at the time and all possessed a grim exterior despite its oftentimes melodic content. This music was circulated along tape trading networks and zine distributions before laying dormant on file sharing sites and MP3 blogs. The collectors, who had either the tapes or files on hard drives, proved to not only be a grey market for sharing the music but also as an archival for this nameless genre. Werdna along with blogs like Asmodian Coven were internet archivists who not only fans of the sound but eventually became pivotal promoters of the era even giving it its modern name: dungeon synth.
Dungeon synth is not unlike other retrospective genres such as Citypop or Northern Soul, where a community after the fact popularized a substyle and even christened a name we all use today. Unlike the two genres, dungeon synth inspired a new generation of musicians to not only listen to celebrate and catalog the music but to also replicate it producing new albums. This was done because of the minimal production needed to participate, the acceptance of low-fidelity recording, and also the celebration “naive magic” which had one person just trying their hand at making a record despite even a knowledge of how to make music. Dungeon synth’s contemporary history grew in the 2010s and into the 2020’s producing records which eclipsed the primary period in both volume as well as popularity. Over time the name for the original period changed from “dungeon synth” to “old school dungeon synth” to eventually “”dark dungeon music” named after the dark ambient label run by former Emperor bassist Håvard Ellefsen (better known as Mortiis). In 2024, Jordan Whiteman of Ancient Meadow Records, a dungeon synth label which operated from 2017 -2024 wrote a 400 page retrospective of this original period titled Dark Dungeon Music. This book, in my opinion, solidified the name of the amorphous genre which existed throughout the 1990s and marked a difference between the original period and its eventual revival.
I have been writing about dungeon synth and its revival since 2014 after stumbling on the music when searching for black metal on Bandcamp. While I was aware of the dark dungeon music which was popular among contemporaries including Mortiis, Depressive Silence, Wongraven, as well as once obscure but now near household names like Secret Stairways, Jääportit, Lunar Womb, and Jim Kirkwood, most of its music was a mystery to me. It was music that inspired the dungeon synth revival. I found it easier to chart the contemporary revival by talking to artists through email and eventually social media as well as survey the genre on the handful of sites it was being discussed. To search and appreciate dark dungeon music came with a recommended knowledge of 1990s underground black metal and the ability to search through MP3 blogs, torrenting sites, and Discogs. Despite my familiarity with black metal, dark dungeon music lay in a sea of music that is daunting when approached. It wasn’t until Aveline (of Wooden Vessels) curated an alphabetical list of dark dungeon music and it wasn’t until I listened to all of the music given to me, in alphabetical order, I appreciated the genre for what I think enchanted so many people. This was visionary music made by people who without a record label to approve or an audience to please made music for themselves as portals to unknown worlds.
My survey of 1980s new age has strengthened my appreciation for bedroom genres which sees people, guided by at home technology, to create worlds without the need of professional infrastructure or committee. What would happen when you gave people, who may or may not know how to play music, the ability to write, record, and duplicate an album? What would happen when that album gets traded among other people and inspires them to do the same. How would this genre of music grow without the use of the internet? While I do not think genres like new age share a common historical connection, this type of solitary ingenuity can be seen in the works of underground synth music and mimicked its networks. While the early 1980’s saw harmonious worlds and angelic soundscapes, dark dungeon music embraced the dark fantasy of Tolkien, Moorcock, and the first and second editions of Dungeons & Dragons allowing the artist to become conductors leading a dark symphony.
Even though it feels obvious , dark dungeon music is self made and because of that retains a certain quality which can make it less accessible to the greater population. There are moments in this mix where the music is very left field, often having distorted narration or having elaborate progressive like suites of synth instrumentals. The technology is oftentimes basic despite the scope of the music and even some of this recording retains distortions of tape duplication. It is music far from professional and oftentimes embolden the lack of oversight or refinement. The creators often take theatrical names and promo shots are grainy pictures of white faces banshees skulking in the woods. Black metal and related genres are easily lampooned especially when demanded to be taken seriously. While there are moments in this mix which feel like they lapse into satire, I have found, much like 1980s new age new age, an appreciation for this music when experienced as outsider art. This is a collection of artists and their dark visions of a world not a part of our own and to appreciate it for what it is and why it sounds like it does is often times more rewarding.
The opening quote to this article is from The Lord of Time who made music as Arcana Liturgia as well as other projects in the 1990s and serves as the opener for the mix. Arcana Litrugia is among some of the few dark dungeon acts who started to play dungeon synth festivals during the last few years. The dungeon synth revival started as an online / bedroom studio only genre with creators never intending to play live. Around the pandemic, dungeon synth became popular enough to support many international festivals causing some creators to resurrect decades old projects. In 2023 I saw Arcana Liturgia and took pictures of the entire North East Dungeon Siege. Even though I have a chaotic good approach to copyright, I sent them a draft of this mix in so many words asking for permission for one song in an entire 3 hour mix hoping one approval would sanctify the entire thing. We talked over Messenger about the late 90s and influences which lead to music like this. I am around the same age as these original creators and often marvel at what I was doing in my teens versus what other Europeans were doing at the time. When I was smoking cigarettes in parking lots and listening to surface level punk rock, others were making music and tape trading music genres that have yet to have a name.
Most of my fascination with dungeon synth, dark dungeon music, and other genres that may not have names is the idea of near forgotten music. For every entry on this list there are perhaps two to three more that never made it to digital streaming or never saw life beyond the tapes they were put to. Dark dungeon music is a genre of music that is entirely personal and feels, despite the few collectors, was meant for a limited audience if an audience existed at all. Much of this music has found its way to video streaming sites primarily through the work of Dungeon Synth Archives which had videos of most of this collection. It is a genre of music which has fascinated me for over a decade and only seems to have existed by happenstance and the passion of a few people who decided to write it down and catalog its existence despite how weird of low quality it might seem. Such a tenuous existence I feel adds to its charm as it feels like it is music which is never a part of this world fully rather a ghostly appreciation which floats through history haunting a small population of enthusiasts. There always seems to be an audience somewhere and for some genres it just decades a few decades to find it.
