Artist: Lone Sentinel
Title: Vampyric Obsolescence
Type: Album
Labels: Weregnome / Hammer & Flail
As we’re all new here, let’s have a little perspective setting. Amongst my broad metal and adjacent loves, between the ‘difficult’ musical noise and the simple catchy ditties I have had a long standing love. Dungeon synth. And yet due to the vagaries of life I have been both a fan since the beginning of times of the great goblin himself Mortiis and utterly new to the scene. My knowledge is both deep in places and pretty surface level in far more despite my somewhat constant and rapidly expanding library. Which pretty much is perfect for this most curious of genres and its genuinely outsider soul.
So here we have one of the absolute legends of the genre still currently creating, Lone Sentinel. And this album, Vampyric Obsolescence is perhaps a perfect doorway for black metal fans to step through.
The opening title track is a slow swirl of what you might pick as quintessential DS; deceptively simple keyboards that transport you without you even realising. A dark world begins to peer through the veil and in a moment you realise you are there and where you were is gone. But we also have simple, deep drum beats and an almost subliminal snarl of black metal vocals, eerie spoken word half masked by the most sombre and dismal keyboard horn sounds, a low choir. A world of shadows and deep, deep history and time. A place of dead gods.
‘The Queen Of Darkness’ is a sparser sound, but sparse like cobwebs and dust and shadows hiding from torchlight as the harpsichord waltz glides past. It is strange that it can both conjure movement with the melody whilst the percussion and soft rattling voice provoke a stillness in the audience. ‘A Lantern Lit Path’ genuinely has that sense of progression, a dark ambience coaxed forward by a gorgeous melody introduced on guitar and then left in the hands of the keyboards. Haunting, enveloping and beautifully atmospheric.
You see this is how immediate dungeon synth can be without the use of traditional ‘hooks’ or refrains. This is the true art of world creation and leading the listener deeper into the dungeons and caverns, the vaulted halls of forgotten gods and the tombs of dead queens still slumbering. It can weave true melancholy, a strange sadness such as ‘Eternal Mourning’. It can lead us to the clash of ‘The Sword And The Spear’ and the cold aftermath of ‘The Indifference Of The Stars’ , the slow unwinding crawl of a black metal song in the mortuary drape of synths. Utterly breathtaking.
‘Eternal Devotion Of The Old Gods’ has an almost spritely step, a more open sound that has a mesmerising effect, which unavoidably leads us to got ‘Beyond The Gates Of Damnation’. An actual black metal riff and dark keyboard melody swirl around the snarled vocals. Primeval black metal to be sure, full of that menace and darkness, yet it brings back those buried tombs and haunted halls.
‘Agony Be My Guide’ once more uses those resonant horn sounds, whisking me back to old, old Dead Can Dance from the depths of sorrow. Whispers and chattering, circling me but their purpose is unclear. Until finally ‘Forward I Walk, Intact I Remain’. Not a victory in the sense of a celebration, more the simple fact of what is. Beautiful, haunted and perhaps allowing a little wonder to seep into your soul. The awe of simply going on, forward, regardless.
Oh this is quintessential dungeon synth. It is world building, transportative and full of dark and somber emotion and that strange awe that these place evoke.
This is truly, if you’ll forgive the self conceit, what walking through liminal spaces should feel like. This is beauty itself.
Gizmo
https://www.instagram.com/lonesentinel_band/
https://hammerandflailrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/vampyric-obsolescence?t=6
Walking The Liminal Space 