Cryptic Dungeon - Forgotten Kingdoms
Review by Digre
I have been listening to Forgotten Kingdoms by Cryptic Dungeon. The artist tells us that he was experimenting with music and had dark ambient in mind when coming up with Cryptic Dungeon. It is supposed to combine dark ambient, some drone, industrial and medieval themes and imagery. This I know because I have read it on the artist facebook page. It is first now or just before writing this I did some research on the artist. I did not know anything about Cryptic Dungeon when I first sealed of my hearing with headphones and pressed play. For the first listen through I thought of it as very sober Dungeon Synth deliberately made bleak and scrawny by using meagre synth sounds bravely kept unclothed by warm reverbs like most ambient music nowadays and with compositions boldly left unfed by rich and highly realistic synthesized orchestral instruments. This way of production and mixing is very effectful and I guess it is hard to make it as genuine and confident as Cryptic Dungeon has done it with this release. The balance is just the right mixture of old styled synth sounds and more modern production. I have listened to his earlier tracks and they have not been as emaciated and undressed as these songs. There is reverb and echoes and all that but not drenched in it. Unusually true to style Dungeon Synth while most records tries to be unique this album seems to be forced not to stand out in a crowd of adventurous dungeon exploring records. It is made like this in a smart way. I love it and I have happily listened to this album over and over again many times for the last two or more weeks.
Aside from Cryptic Dungeon this Nederlander named Y. Crypt has also created and released a side project called Vagor that uses similar ideas as the main act when it comes to melodies and chord progression, the production is considerably rougher and turbulent like dungeon noise, but Vagor comes with something that Cryptic Dungeon does not: A descriptive article that recount in plain text the story that the music are telling us and the image it depicts. I have seen this concept many times since I started indulging myself with this new era of Dungeon Synth. I do like the idea of an artist creating an imaginary world and then composing music about the phenomenons and occurrences drawn from these self made lands of unknown. But then I like it even more when the description is vague and even non existing, letting the listener’s own imagination decrypt the dungeon tales told and this was the case for me when I started listening to this new bandcamp album called Forgotten Kingdoms. Not that there is no descriptions, there are, but because I had it downloaded to my mp3-player and I did not even once look at the display displaying the track titles as the machine was pocketed while I was strolling around or bicycling along the river flowing mighty and wide through this city where I live. And since I have been listening to these tracks while outside just as the spring overtook a winter that overstayed its welcome here in the northern Scandinavia I have pictured this music as a spring album lit by an eagerly rising sun forcing the infant spring leafs to burst out in a cascade of chock green flora accompanied by an ever lasting and impenetrable mist of stubborn pollen.
Especially Bloody March Of The Necromancer makes me think of late spring and early summer. This track is also available as a single track bandcamp album and I think Cryptic Dungeon singles it out as it constitute the overall intention of this act. The melodies builds up to something very weary that seems to wither of and almost die but is then carried up by a pretty primitive percussion that works like crutches to a stumbling tune barely standing by it own. In my mind it is like a soundtrack for something traveling through a weary lonesome summer landscape of deep and thick leaf forests, valleys and cold rivers unknowing about the horrors that await around the next corner.. something like the vignette to the Shining with that car snaking about towards its doom.
And then there is the track that makes me believe I am listening to the Ghostbusters theme song. The first seconds Secret Rites sounds very similar or even exactly the same as Ray Parker Juniors first few chords with just that type of synth sounds used. But this tracks takes another path completely and becomes something rather different. Something that I have very much enjoyed listening to. Most of the tracks have made me picture movie scenes like those of the last millennium now far gone. Not in a Hammer Film Productions way but rather something like Troma Entertainment horrors but without the goofiness. I do not know how to explain it but these tracks have a way of depicting annihilation, inevitable dismay, very somber horror and demise. And then there is the last track, Dawn Of Rebirth, that happily emerges and rises aloft proudly declaring victory, survival and success. Once frozen and dead now green and alive again. Great tunes.
And then I have been listening to this while alone indoors reading song descriptions and looking at cover art. This is not Summer Horror music after all. It is all about a long forgotten kingdoms, real historical battles, like that of Assandun, and also, I dare guess, imaginary ones about necromancers and such. It makes sense when reading the titles but it does not burst the bubble of the imaginary world of Spring Time Terror that I have conjured up. It is just another way of listening to this. The music is gloomy and unlit just as the landscapes, rich of mountains and castles seen on the cover art are.
The album starts of with the track Majestic Call To Arms I - Battle Of Ancients on which the composing is very majestic but with a sound font that resemble that of 90's Sierra Adventure Games like Kings Quest V. I am not sure if this is made with physical and probably expensive Yamaha keyboard synthesizers with multiple pre-established instruments or with a early version of Cubase with built in midi sounds and a sound card from the 90's. The organ playing on Of Fallen Heroes And Mead sounds a bit like drunk and ignorant cheerful while a creepy unrest permeates the entire track. Nothing is really merry or optimistic on this tracklist.
The third track Forgotten Kingdoms starts of as any chill out ambient music but soon one can hear the dungeon synth influences. I am not sure that this is the case or if my mind is playing tricks on me but I can hear weak bright voices talking to each other as if pixies where arguing to each other. This is probably not actually there but somewhere in the sparsely reverbed ambiance I can still hear it.
Echoing Chasms sounds like Ocean Synth and pitched down pan flute with echoes. This track could easily be 10 times longer without me complaining. Secret Rites is still Ghostbusters at first but then goes of like a little goblin sneaking about in a old and murky cellar. I do not think he is supposed to witness that rite, mentioned in the song title, taking place down there in the dull blackness.
I really do hope that Cryptic Dungeon keeps doing music like this and I will come back to this very sorrowful and well made Dungeon Synth album or, as I prefer to categorize it, a splendid and majestic Spring Time Terror album.