Guides/A Riffiter guide
Where to start with dungeon synth
Lo-fi synthesizer music for imaginary castles: a beginner's path through the catacombs.
Dungeon synth is a genre of lo-fi, fantasy-themed ambient synthesizer music that grew out of the early-1990s Norwegian black metal scene and revived as a thriving underground around 2010. This guide offers seven entry points, from Mortiis's Født til å herske (1994) to modern keystones like Old Tower and Erang.
In the early 1990s, a handful of black metal musicians put down their guitars and started making quiet, primitive synthesizer music about castles, forests and sorcery, music that sounded like the pause screen of a fantasy game that never existed. It was barely a genre until the 2010s, when Bandcamp gave the aesthetic a home and thousands of anonymous one-person projects built it into one of the internet's most devoted undergrounds.
Dungeon synth is atmosphere first: tape hiss, cheap presets and total sincerity. These seven projects are the way in.
- 1
Født til å herske
Be the first to rate—The founding document. Håvard Ellefsen left his role as Emperor's bassist, renamed himself Mortiis, and recorded Født til å herske (1994), two long tracks of looping, regal synth gloom. Most of the genre is still elaborating on this record.
- 2
II by Depressive Silence (1996)
The beautiful pole of the early genre: where Mortiis brooded, Depressive Silence (Germany, 1996) shimmered, cascading fantasy melodies that half the modern scene quotes directly. The most-loved record in classic dungeon synth.
- 3
Enchantment of the Ring
Be the first to rate—An American cult classic from 1997 by the late Matthew Davis, rediscovered and canonized by the revival. Humble equipment, genuine melancholy, the record that proves the genre's power was never about production.
- 4
The Last Eidolon
Be the first to rate—The modern scene's towering dark entry: Dutch project Old Tower built The Last Eidolon (2020) from slow, cavernous drones and funeral-procession melodies. Dungeon synth at its most monumental, this is the "dark dungeon" end of the spectrum.
- 5
- 6
flies the coop
Be the first to rate—The cozy wing of the genre ("comfy synth") at its best: Hole Dweller's Shire-inspired flutes and warm tape melodies turned hobbit domesticity into one of the revival's most loved projects. Dungeon synth you can make tea to.
- 7
Taur nu Fuin
Be the first to rate—Tolkien dungeon synth proper: harsh, wind-blasted loops named for Middle-earth's darkest places. Taur-Nu-Fuin (2016) became a modern classic of the raw style, the bridge between the genre's black metal roots and its Bandcamp present.
Artists in this guide
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