This article was written in The Reliquary Notes #4 which was published in late Summer 2025. Later in the year, I made a mix of dark dungeon music and spoke to Arcana Liturgia about dark dungeon music from the 1990s. During my research into the three hours of music, The Dungeon Synth Archives proved to be not only a reliable source for streams of the full albums but the only video for that album on the internet. It would be an understatement to to say this channel carried the history of dungeon synth into the revival era and gave current artists and fans a window into both decades old music as well as obscure contemporaries. In a genre built on archival appreciation of music, the Dungeon Synth Archives is an invaluable institution that unfortunately does the happiest of histories. What follows is the text from the article without pictures since this article was intended for a zine publication. Many thanks to John for his candor and to Relics of the Enteral City for publishing these articles. You both make the underground possible.
-KAP 2026
A Thousand Sonic Caves
Over the past ten or so odd years, dungeon synth (DS) has surpassed its expected timeline. For an internet microscene based around the resurrection of a decades old black metal ambient offshoot, DS”s revival period has lasted longer than its original target of resurrection. According to places like Rate Your Music, there were more DS albums made in 2022 than the entirety of the 1990s. DS is not an ephemeral microfad rather a full-fledged genre now with multiple decades of history and reference points between the two. The age of the internet makes things easier to catalog with digital archiving almost a part of an albums creation. We probably would have more 1990’s records had they come out a decade or two later in an age of online music librarians. Still though even in the age of information things don’t get written down and sometimes are lost to time. The revival of DS and its longevity, in my opinion, can be laid at the feet of those who take a moment and write things down.
Dungeon synth, in name, began in 2011 with the creation of the Dungeon Synth Blog which used the term and anchored it with a specific aesthetic. The first post on the website stated “Dungeon synth is the sound of the ancient crypt. The breath of the tomb, that can only be properly conveyed in music that is primitive, necro, lo-fi, forgotten, obscure, and ignored by all of mainstream society. Andrew Wernda, creator of the Dungeon Synth Blog, cared enough about this niche style of ambient music made by black metal musicians enough to give it a name and catalog the aesthetic for other people. Before this, the lofi ambient music was called dark dungeon music, neoclassical, dark medieval, dark ambient, or even not given a name because it was just side projects to be passed around in trading circles or even just filed separately in record stores next to the main projects. DS as a concept did not exist before this time and the name was a categorization of not only older music from the 1990’s but eventually what people would create when they resurrected the style.
Over the past 15 years of its revival, DS has been cataloged by a few devoted archivists who cared enough for the music. These archivists, despite its perceived importance, cared enough about the music enough to write it down. Cataloging history is important because it not only gives credence to the artists who are cataloged but also leads to a library of information for new people to continually have access to when entering into the genre. In the mid 2010’s the DS began gaining attention and new people entered into it wanting to find more. I honestly forgot when I first heard about the channel as I felt it was just there one day and everyone used it to listen to new music. Having a premiere Youtube channel to listen to new albums felt like a quality of life improvement over the static webpages, granular bandcamp sites, and MP3 blogs which ruled the revivals early days. One of the largest places to listen to DS albums even in the mid 10’s was a YouTube channel called the Dungeon Synth Archives (DSA).
During its inception and early days, the DSA was a marquee location to hear new and old DS albums providing a badge of honor for the new artists who would suddenly enjoy a wealth of attention. It was also a place which prominently featured artists like Sequestered Keep, Hedge Wizard, and Erdstall, names which at the time were some of the more popular artists. The channel was also one of the first to feature older material such as Cernunnos Woods – Lost Woods (1994), Jim Kirkwood – Master of Dragons (1991), and Secret Stairways – Enchantment of the Ring (1997) expanding the scope of early DS outside of the ones already known. Along with cataloging new and old albums, the videos would list subgenres leading people to seek out things like medieval ambient, winter synth, comfy synth, and dino synth. Over the course of its history, the channel amassed over one thousand full length albums and cemented the legacy of already popular videos by keeping them in the algorithm. History is random at times what it chooses to remember but it would be safe to say that some of the most well known artists in the DS genre owe some of their legacy to a channel which featured them early in their careers.
I messaged the DSA a few times over the past couple of years asking if they wanted to do an article. For the reasons that were stated above, I found the channel one of the more important reasons for DS longevity as it provided continual welcome packets for new people into the genre. I never got anything back and just thought they were too busy for me which is sometimes the case.. It wasn’t until meeting John Lordswood at the North East Dungeon Siege (NEDS). John was playing with Weress and I was made aware I should meet him since he was described as someone who had “been around DS for quite some time.” I enjoy meeting people who experienced the early days of the revival as it honestly feels like a different world than today. This is where I learned John was one of the founders of the DSA and over the course of the weekend, I learned the history of the DSA which was born out of mutual interest and ended in dramatic turmoil with its creators.
KAP: Can you tell me your history before the start of the dungeon synth archives.
John Lordswood: Before the Dungeon Synth Archives, I was already immersed in the world of Dungeon Synth and Dark Ambient, a genre that has always resonated with me through its lo-fi sound textures created by people who shared the same sensibility or universes as me. I was already experimenting with ambient music with some of my personal projects in search of new sounds, with Weress for example, but I was still curious about what others were doing. I wanted to discover hidden treasures, to promote artists who weren’t necessarily well-known. My journey before the archives was, above all, that of a passionate person who loved to create, who wanted to connect people through music and ensure that everyone could be inspired. The archives were born from a shared desire, almost by chance. It has become a platform that showcases Dungeon Synth from all its eras and has contributed to its promotion. YouTube allows you to listen to artists’ music and follow their work so that it doesn’t fall into oblivion. It’s not a physical product, but you can discover obscure and forgotten roots from the 90s as well as more recent projects. It’s worth remembering that before 2015, Dungeon Synth albums were very rare on YouTube, and so over the years, it has become a kind of sound library on the channel. Initially, it was an approach based on passion, exchanges, and research that my friend and I conducted. I contributed to the early days of the channel by curating tracks, doing my own research to find new music, managing the entire aesthetic, sorting requests, communicating with artists via email, and uploading numerous videos. It was a lot of learning and sincere sharing. There was a real sense of duty and a real contribution to a scene that was close to our hearts. There was also a lot of mystery work through the anonymity of the channel, before everything disappeared after I was no longer involved in the archives.
Inner Peace and Indifference
I usually do not like to get in the middle of conflict or even getting near it. On a personal note one of my shortcomings is avoiding conflict and not liking to talk about things which bother me or others. The story of the DSA though comes with conflict seeing how the two creators, John Longswood and Jimmy Bigbey are no longer working together rather saw their partnership dissolve. John discusses this below and I reached out to Jimmy for anything he would like to say but similar to before. After briefly discussing plans through Instagram our conversation got no further than pleasant planning. The story of the DSA would be incomplete without mentioning this fact and though I feel you can enjoy the body of work without knowing these details, the full picture illuminates the trials and tribulations of working in congress with another person and the inevitable fate that some partnerships arrive at. I would love for things to be fine between these two people who I never really met since I feel the DSA has been so beneficial to many people that strife between its creators cast a shadow over years of hard work and happiness.
Anyone who has spent time with creative people working in a group will likely be aware of the troubles that can arise and also sometimes come at the cost of the project. I would live to tell you things are fine with everyone but it is okay to say that no they are not. Even something as simple as a DS youtube channel is at the center of something which causes pain and heartache. DS would not be what it is without people putting themselves into projects and seeing those projects crumble before them. I’m thankful for John to share this history with me as I feel it’s important to be okay with things not being okay. Talking with John over the course of this was not only out of perspective of the DSA but also his project Weress as an extension of the channel and how one person decides to respond to life events. DS isn’t something that is fabricated entirely from imagination rather the worlds which we construct have roots in the pain and joys in our own world. I have learned that DS is not one thing for everyone rather many things to different people. John’s work in Weress and its evolution seems to be a place where he has control over how things play out since there are many moments in the real world where things are out of one’s control.
How did your relationship with the Dungeon Synth Archives end?
Unfortunately the adventure ended badly for me. I can say who he is because he revealed himself on the Dungeon Synth Archives social media to break the anonymity of the channel and to present his Instagram page. The other person is Jimmy Bigey. For example, he participated with me on the Avenir Funèbre project under the name B. and founded the Obscure Dungeon Records label in 2013. He has had musical ideas, but has never officially released anything, at least not without my help, whether in composition or physically. Currently, and for the past few years, he has been doing nature photography, I find it’s what best suits him in order to fully express himself. We had relationship problems between us and our paths abruptly separated. I no longer had access to the channel in mid-2023 without my will, and my own musical projects on video were deleted. My friend Henri Dumois’s first two Descort albums, produced on my label Ancient King Records, have been withdrawn, as have my projects like Skhemty and the releases of Weress. But this is something he had already done in the past at the time with Balrog and Anubis when there were copyright issues surrounding those projects.
I experienced it as a sense of dispossession and a lack of recognition, especially since we had built this channel together through the years. Afterward, I was even targeted by abusive reports from this longtime friend, both on social media and when he deleted my own Bandcamp pages of my personal projects, which pushed me to completely distance myself from him. It wasn’t a pleasant time to go through. But aside from all these problems with the relationship he and I had during that period, I remain proud of what I was able to contribute and the impact we had on the scene during its revival. I still enjoy watching this innovative scene evolve with great music and continue to meet wonderful creative people through this subgenre with whom I share the same vision.
What I hold against Jimmy in this story is that I gave a part of my life for him. After years of friendship, effort, and shared projects, he literally turned his back on me in the most brutal way possible, by humiliating me publicly in front of thousands of people and trying to destroy years of musical work that others listened to and felt. To me, that is unacceptable. The truth is that he was consumed by immense jealousy. He couldn’t handle the fact that my projects were coming to life on my own label, that I was taking off without him, that I was building something solid and sincere without his support. He never managed to launch his own projects on his own or run a label in a stable way, while on my side, I kept creating, collaborating, surrounding myself with good people who share my artistic or natural sensitivity, traveling where life called me. I changed, evolved, grew… and I believe that’s what he couldn’t accept. He could have seen it as a natural divergence in our paths. But instead of showing empathy, respect, or even just a bit of understanding, his ego pushed him to lie, manipulate and sabotage. I find it deeply self-centered to be trapped in your own version of reality, unable to recognize the value of those around you or even share credit, to the point of forgetting the human being in front of you. Especially when that person is someone with whom you’ve shared nearly half your life, largely during the years when you were both still becoming who you are.
I was deeply affected by this separation to the point of falling into a depression, I’m still fighting today, but I’m still here. I’ve freed myself from that toxic behavior. I’ve learned to be careful about who I let into my life, to set boundaries, and to protect everything that matters, my musical work, but especially the people close to me, because they were inevitably impacted too. Since then, I’ve refocused on myself. Despite the anxiety I still have, I’m rebuilding many aspects of my life to be more ambitious, giving myself new professional and artistic goals and challenges, following my needs and desires, being surrounded by good people who are free and open-minded, but most of all, by fully accepting and recognizing who I am. I keep moving forward, with the lessons in mind, but a stronger heart. I’m proud of who I’ve become through these trials. I’m someone stronger, more aligned, and still driven by that creative flame. On the path toward inner peace and indifference.
Weress is the most personal project I have had to this day. It’s through this project that I express my emotions most sincerely, like my fears, my sadness, or darker parts of myself, but also the brighter sides of my life, memories or even courage. All of this is written in music in a dreamy and fantastical way, linked to the night, which has always been particularly meaningful and restorative for me. I tell my stories in a blurry way most of the time, like a naïve or childlike way of remembering a dream, as if it were just a vague memory in my head. Actually when I compose, it really is a moment of therapy. Then through the music, I add visuals, costumes, videos, basically, everything I want to decorate what I express through my ideas and emotions that I want to release, so I also make sure to translate all of that into live performances. Then for the listeners and audience, everyone sees their own interpretation, depending on their sensitivity or what it might inspire in them. The most important thing above all is to escape. I talk about several personal things in this album, and among all of that yes, I mentioned this part for example through the track Vingtenaires. For this track, I drew inspiration from my most precious and nostalgic memories of my twenties. It talks about a lot of things I don’t want to forget, but above all, it’s a song about farewells. It was my way of saying goodbye to a strong friendship, also a farewell to the YouTube channel, and many other things. It’s my way of expressing what I felt through atmospheres and trying to turn a sad period into something beautiful musically, at least I try to.
A Story Made In The Moment
The DSA is still uploading videos and in fact just checking it out while I write this article, the last three uploads, Moonlight – Reveries Under Moonlight (1997), Heritage – Verdant Kingdom (2025) , and The Mystickal East – Herbz Niszra Nisa-Inrana II (1996) are things I have never heard before. Not everything on the DSA is popular and in fact what gets popular is still a mystery and something beholden to the algorithm. Looking over the most popular videos of the channel (all with over 350k views) are some of DS’ most popular artists along with ones that feel like they got even more popular after randomly being showcased for some reason. While you have classics like Depressive Silence, Fief, and Thangorodrim, you also have artists like Castleseige, Ziggurath, and Vindkaldr. This is not to say one should be popular and one should not rather the internet algorithm is an enigma when it comes to what travels to others feeds. All of the artists in the top 10 owe part of their legacy, even if it is the platform in which their videos were hosted, to the DSA and their archival work.
One of the more fun topics I have when talking to people who have been around DS for a while is their personal favorites in the wake of so much history. The more years one has the more unique their list becomes as they were the ones who not only have seen the most but also were there to see things that they did not expect become remembered and others who they thought were going to be classics, become lost to time. Remembrance and forgetting is not a judgement of archivists rather it is ultimately up to the history what gets remembered and forgotten. The DSA has done their best to archive things that would most certainly become forgotten. While it has showcased many great things and built the legacy of many great artists, there are things that just do not make it to the next year or generation. Perhaps these are the things that are meant to be discovered by others, continuing what makes DS so great is an almost endless trove of stories for one to discover.
Out of all of the records uploaded to the DSA, can you give me three that you feel are underrated in terms of appreciation and something everyone should check out?
It’s strange to see some albums explode while others, which I find just as beautiful, remain discreet. The most popular ones often touch on a powerful imaginary world, such as the medieval era or fantasy magic. Some play on a very distinctive aesthetic or strong imagery, others are more minimalist, but behind the number of views on the most popular albums, I especially remember the emotion and the uniqueness. I was truly grateful that some people were happy to see their music shared on the Dungeon Synth Archives, I mean, it’s always touching to see an artist feel recognized for what they offer artistically through their universe. That said, I think it’s also important to remember that the channel doesn’t represent the entire Dungeon Synth scene, it’s a selection. Just because an album is less popular doesn’t mean it’s less recognized, all the artists on the scene are excellent and have their own musical world. Also, many releases don’t appear there or were subsequently removed, simply because they were not authorized for broadcast, changes of policies on YouTube, censorship campaigns, the copyrights, either by the musicians themselves or by the labels. The scene is much larger and more diverse than what a single channel can contain, DSA remains an important showcase still today, but it doesn’t cover the entire genre, nor all its nuances, and this is what makes the scene rich with its thousand sonic caves. It’s difficult to choose because I would like all of the records uploaded on the archives to be recognized for what they create, but if I had to make three selection, I would say:
Soltri “Cursed Kings” medieval melodies with a great composition worthy of a film just played with synths, his entire discography is worth listening to so that his wonderful music can continue to transport us to ancient times.
Graveren “Du Cortège À La Fosse” I had the immense pleasure of meeting and seeing Graveren perform at the Northeast Dungeon Siege this year. For Mortiis fans, this is a dark world that the artist masters while bringing his own artistic touch.
Trogool “Beyond the River Skai” offers a crazy narrative intensity through the wide variety of instruments, the atmosphere of this very luminous album, a melodic gem that deserves more attention.
These releases don’t try to please, they just inhabit the interpretation of a story made in the moment with their own vision and were created instinctively because the musicians felt the desire to express themselves through these sounds, that’s exactly what I love in art and Dungeon Synth.