Hey,
I’m generally more into melodeath, power metal, folk metal, and epic heavy metal. I sometimes listen to black metal, but I’m not a big fan of it. Unless it’s blackened something (death, folk…)
But some black metal songs are something else for me.
Keys to the Astral Gates and Mystic Doors
This one has absolutely beautiful dungeon synth over the raw black metal, and I love it.
Listen to “Her Body Broken in the Bloody Snow”.
This one also has excellent dungeon synth, together with black metal. Very good songs, their only flaw, which pisses me to no end, is the unnecessary effect on the vocals.
Now that I’m typing it out, I guess that what I’m looking for are bands that put emphasis on dungeon synth, but are still metal? But how do I look for more? Is there even a genre that I can search to find more of that?
I don’t know subgenres of BM well (sorry, I’m definitely not trve kvlt enough), I tried:
- Raw BM: this sounds to be typical raw production second wave like Mayhem
- Melodic BM: seems like pure melodic BM (without death, or punk, etc.) hardly exist. Found good bands, but not what I’m looking for
- USBM: generally not what I’m looking for
- Lofi BM: might be the best match? Found Nihilitic Depths - Beneath Forgotten Ruins which is quite similar, but bands described lofi BM don’t always correspond
Any help is welcome. Suggestions of bands or albums welcome too. After all, there might not be a name for that.
Thanks
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Check out Stormkeep. Their first EP Galdrum and their album Tales of Othertime have beautiful dungeon synth parts.
Genre-wise I would say you find something like this in the Atmospheric and Melodic Black Metal area, but both does not inherently mean that it is dungeon-synthy, sadly.
To throw a few names out there that might fit:
- Stormruler: More towards Melodic BM, but it scratched the Stormkeep itch for me after some time.
- Ungfell: One of my favourite swiss bands, more medieval/folky sounds, worked for me.
- Ateiggär: Similar to Ungfell, yet still different.
- Ophanim: Even more atmospheric.
- Summoning: One of the first bands with this sound, check out Long Lost Where No Pathway Goes.
- Emyn Muil: Very Summoning-inspired.
- Arx Atrata: Also very atmospheric.
I might remember more in the future, if I do, I’ll update this comment.
Wow, thanks!
I’m listening to the Stormkeep EP and it’s excellent! I got to say that the band logo and album artwork are amazing!
I didn’t mention Summoning and Emyn Muil, because I feared it would throw the recommendations on the path of Epic Atmospheric Black Metal. I like them, and they do combine black metal and dungeon synth, but I feel like they’re somewhat different. I can’t explain why.
Thanks for all the recommendations, I’ll try them all.
Stormkeep became one of my favourite bands really fast for both of those reasons.
Yes, it is not exactly the same vibe, but for me it is still close enough to recommend them in the same breath.
Have fun!
God damn Stormkeep is so good
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Always a pleasure. The genre is rather obscure and I like to spread the word lol
Since you’re browsing Bandcamp use their tags. If you look near the bottom of those albums you linked you can find tags, pick dungeon synth and black metal to get a list of bands to check out. Add more tags to refine the results.
Thanks to you, I just found out that in the web version of Bandcamp, it’s possible to combine genre tags in search. Will be trying this. Thanks! (Black metal + Dungeon synth)
Awesome, glad it helped. I use it all the time and I was worried that it was an obvious answer until I tried to find the tag search on the site.
Have you listened to dimmu borgir?
I sometimes gave them a try. I don’t remember the dungeon synth. I’ll give them a try again.