DARK AMBIENT

Full Album Stream: Diminishing – ‘The Unnamable’

June 15, 2023

Hear industrial ambient metal drone duo Diminishing clear the fug from your frontal lobe on their debut The Unnamable

Hear Shane Embury Return With Dark Sky Burial’s “Constellation of Archetypes”

April 1, 2022

The ever-prolific Dark Sky Burial project of Napalm Death’s Shane Embury returns with a new single just in time for Bandcamp Friday.

Video Premiere: Dark Sky Burial – ‘De Omnibus Dubitandum Est’

November 6, 2020

Shane Embury’s haunting ambient project Dark Sky Burial delivers a video for De Omnibus Dubitandum Est‘s title track and an update on album No. 2.

Demo:listen: Fetishism

August 28, 2020

Experimental German black metal outsider Fetishism cast their analog spell of malevolence on this week’s Demo:listen.

Track Premiere: Francis Roberts – ‘Barrier of Light’

May 7, 2019

Stream a new song, with an accompanying video, from American dungeon synth producer, Francis Roberts.

Demo:listen: Icon Of Curse

May 18, 2018

This week Demo:listen unearths the pestilential sounds of California’s Icon Of Curse.

Spooky Synths: A Neill Jameson Halloween Playlist

October 31, 2017

Krieg’s Neill Jameson curates a special, dungeon synth-focused holiday playlist for the 2017 Halloween/winter season.

Dark Ambient: For When You Need to Concentrate…or Meditate on the Nothingness of Existence

September 22, 2017

While we may not want to admit it to each other when engaged in the fruitless exercise of maintaining our street cred, we metalheads sometimes need to listen to something other than metal. At the same time, however, we may want to maintain a similar mood or feel to our usual death, black and doom…

Track Premiere: Gridfailure – ‘Hostile Alchemist’

February 16, 2017

Gridfailure reveals the secrets of a “Hostile Alchemist” on the first part of their upcoming EP.

EORÐESLAJYR LET LOOSE THE WITCHES ON HOMAGE TO 1922 SILENT FILM “HÄXAN”

November 23, 2016

Good goddamn is HÄXAN some dark, disquieting, creepy, heavy, seriously avant garde, Hellraiser-esque torment-is-delight nastiness! Composed to serve as a soundtrack for Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 witchcraft n’ Satan heavy silent film of the same title, the latest from EORÐESLAJYR — that’s “earth slayer,” if you dare call their name — has got a Scorn by way of Swans by way of circa Too Dark Park Skinny Puppy vibe and its textures and left turns will fuck with your head.

To celebrate the album’s release — pick up your copy here — we asked the to delve into a few specific moments of inspiration drawn from the film that went on to possess the music…

Rise of the Machines: A Dark Electronic/Ambient Starter Kit

June 25, 2015

Heavy metal has been flirting with electronic music for decades now, but the lines between the two worlds seem blurrier today than ever before. Chalk it up to Internet culture—with instant access to all the world’s information comes a vast multitude of subgenres that have enough permutations to satisfy all but the most discerning purists. Add to that the recent popularity of synth-heavy horror flicks like It Follows and numerous electronic artists signing to metal labels (Goblin Rebirth on Relapse, Gost/Dan Terminus/Perturbator on Blood Music) and it becomes pretty obvious: dark electronic/ambient music has pulled off a full-scale crossover!

Crucial Blast Fall Showcase

October 1, 2013

We can make this introduction brief: Crucial Blast is hands down one of the most innovative, adventurous labels currently operating in the world of extreme music, specializing in capturing sounds from that nether region where ethereal beauty intermingles with disquieting darkness. As such, the first day of October seemed the perfect time to query label…