Swords and sorcery have served as metal muses since the genre’s earliest days and for the most seminal acts. Indeed, many a writer here at AMG Studios has indulged in a game or three hundred of Dungeons & Dragons, and I imagine the same can be said of our esteemed commentariat. So, on the rare occasion that dungeon synth, the correct soundtrack for all D&D games, falls into the promo sump, it’s picked up fairly quickly. Old Sorcery’s newest full-length, The Outsider, didn’t even make it that far before Mystikus Hugebeard and I had a Canadian standoff about coverage and settled on this appropriately lengthy double review.

Old Sorcery is the dungeon synth project of Lahti, Finland-based multi-instrumentalist Vechi Vrăjitor.1 The Outsider sees Vrăjitor continuing the “Masks of the Magi” trilogy that began with 2025’s delightful and exploratory The Escapist. Small excursions from Old Sorcery’s core sound yielded great results, incorporating sweeping cinematic textures and classical instrumentation. That adventurous spirit lives on here, but The Outsider ranges much further afield. Vrăjitor ventures into territory once explored by early Emperor, but he emerges with a sound more atmospheric and raw. 12-grit tremolo walls, blast beats aplenty, and echoing rasps like howling storm winds provide a base upon which Old Sorcery centers icy synths (“Magick Triumph,” “Barrowgrim Asylum”), folk-minded woodwinds (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” “Where Sorrow Reigns”), and the searching reverence of Sojourner or Eldamar. Rather than an end in itself, Vrăjitor uses black metal on The Outsider as a malleable vehicle to further explore the concepts introduced in The Escapist.

The Outsider by Old Sorcery

The result is a 71-minute behemoth. Following The Escapist’s comparatively trim 50 minutes, The Outsider was a daunting prospect, to say the least. I still think it could lose ten minutes or so—“The Pain Threshold,” early sections of “Innigkeit” and “Magick Triumph,” and the quirky Gothic section of “Where Sorrow Reigns”—but repeated listens showed me that I was missing the forest for the trees. And like the moss that grows on those trees, The Outsider grew on me. Both black metal and dungeon synth are well-suited to fostering atmosphere and emotive landscapes, and Vrăjitor harnesses this shared propensity to his advantage. With turns at times subtle—the synths and guitars shifting into lockstep at the end of “Magick Triumph”—and at others, explosive and invigorating—the phenomenal triple attack of gritty guitar, ephemeral synth licks, and breathy woodwind solo in “Where Sorrow Reigns”—The Outsider is a journey, not a destination.

And it is the compositional vistas and narrative musicality of The Outsider that make it a journey worth taking. The bones of a story are hidden within The Outsider, and Vrăjitor intends them to be found. While there are presumably lyrics to The Outsider, Vrăjitor’s vocals are pushed back in the mix and filtered, allowing this to be a functionally instrumental album. Such Old Sorcery as this will naturally whisper different tales to different listeners, but I defy the skeptic to stand on the moon-kissed snowfields of “Magick Triumph,” tarry by the campfire and tender acoustics of “Innigkeit,”2 or emerge from the airy, crystalline caverns “Where Sorrow Reigns” and conjure no dreams of the titular outsider’s adventures. Not merely a pairing, The Outsider weaves wintery synths and raw, blackened atmospherics into a single spell and adorns it with grand, evocative structures and diverse instrumentation to create a story that needs no overt narration, but reveals its bones through music alone.

Established through the excellent “Castle” trilogy,3 Old Sorcery is a mainstay in dungeon synth circles, and if The Outsider proves anything, it’s for good reason. While The Escapist took day trips beyond Old Sorcery’s core sound, The Outsider bravely departs familiar territory while never forgetting its heritage. While there are certainly passages and pathways I trudged through rather than enjoyed, The Outsider is a singular, grand tapestry, cleverly composed and beautifully arranged. Old Sorcery’s latest is a work best basked in and consumed organically, rather than dissected microscopically, and has only gotten better with each spin. Set aside an hour on a cold, snowy day (there should be plenty of them right about now), cozy up with a warm drink, and hear The Outsider’s tale.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026

Mystikus Hugebeard (a practitioner of old sorcery, as it were)

Whenever the yearning for old-school dungeon synth takes me, Old Sorcery has long been one of my first choices. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that during my preparatory research, I was rather shocked to learn that Old Sorcery debuted as recently as 2017 with Realms of Magickal Sorrow. I’d just assumed Old Sorcery has been around since, I don’t know, time immemorial, only because Old Sorcery so effortlessly plays that sort of raw, old school dungeon synth that you’d find on a cassette tape tucked away next to a Jim Kirkwood or Depressive Silence. I’m grateful that Spicie Forrest clued me in on this release and allowed me to double review with him, such that I could further inform our readers of the truly quality dungeon synth act that Old Sorcery is. This opportunity has not presented itself in a way I’d anticipated, however, because The Outsider is not merely dungeon synth like most Old Sorcery releases, but also an album of raw, wintry black metal.

As The Outsider opens in “Magick Triumph,” rumbling horns and scattered synths set the stage for a classic Swords n’ Sorcery experience typical to the Old Sorcery oeuvre, until a grimy guitar chord descends like a fog. It’s worth mentioning that Old Sorcery has traveled this blackened road before with 2020’s Sorrowcrown, but it’s done exceptionally well here. It’s the kind of frigid black metal you’d hear from Paysage d’Hiver and Lunar Aurora, with a similarly raw production style to boot. An overly raw-sounding mix that sacrifices too much listenability for “authenticity” is an immediate album-killer for me, but The Outsider is in that perfect sweet spot. The tremolos and blast-beats buzz with wintry chill and the vocals are way, way in the back, and the synths are always able to cut through the din. The mix has that nice, approachable sort of buzz, like just a little too much wine.4 Still, headphones will definitely be your friend for this album.

Old Sorcery weaves dungeon synth and black metal together such that each is stronger for the other’s presence, effectively playing off each other’s strengths. The dungeon synth elements in The Outsider enjoy an active melodic role in the heavier songs, the inviting, pleasant tones of old-school dungeon synth exuding warmth amidst the cold black metal. It makes for some standout moments, like frostbiting synths fading in and out through stormy guitar riffs (“Magick Triumph”), or a crystalline melody ringing hopeful above rhythmic tremolos and strings (“Where Sorrow Reigns”). “The Interior Gates of the True Soul” is an exquisite blend of synths and metal with an energy that almost reminds of Khonsu, a percussive, mystical synth melody warping, shifting, driving the song forward atop rolling tremolos. There is, naturally, a great deal of care in The Outsider’s construction of atmosphere, but the melodic focus given to the synths in relation to the black metal feels quite refreshing for the genre. As such, The Outsider rarely feels passive even across its length and maintains a strong sense of engagement from moment to moment.

Speaking of length, The Outsider is notably on the longer side, clocking in at over 70 minutes. But I find that Old Sorcery manages the time well with a healthy spread of longer and shorter songs, coupled with their diverse songwriting approach. The Outsider begins and ends with its dramatic epics, as the bulk of the album swirls through cackling, malevolent melodies (“Barrowgrim Asylum”), softer dungeon synth proper (“Innigkeit,” “The Pain Threshold”), and fantastical electronic/metal harmonies (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul”). There’s nary a weak link on the album, but while the staccato, electronic synth tones work wonders in “Magick Triumph” and “The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” I wish they were utilized a bit more in the ambient tracks. “The Pain Threshold” technically fits that bill, but it’s written in such a way that’s more sweeping and orchestral. It would’ve been nice to see the sharper synth tones common to Old Sorcery’s other works explored in a space less dominated by chaotic black metal, that I might appreciate them in clearer focus.

All in all, The Outsider is another rock-solid album by an artist who has consistently delivered great music, even though this album is a rare break from the Old Sorcery mold. It’s well-paced, well-written dungeon synth/black metal that is always good, and often great. I’ve often joked that this hellsite needs more goddamn dungeon synth, and The Outsider is my perfect specimen: just metal enough to bypass Steel’s gaze, yet with enough dungeon synth that I don’t look out of place wearing my wizard robes while listening to it. I furthermore suspect that my Spicie friend has delivered similarly positive tidings, so now that you’ve had two exceedingly trustworthy goobers tell you how good this album is, just go listen to the damn thing.

Rating: Very Good!

It's getting to the point where I've listened to so much black metal this year that I can't remember if I posted this one already, or if I took the recommendation from someone else. If the latter, thanks whoever you are, because this is absolutely brilliant. A little bit of punk and black and roll wrapped in a nice bit of old-school, 2nd-wave blasting.

Mond by Lunar Aurora (2005): https://lunaraurora.bandcamp.com/album/mond

#blackmetal #blackmetalmonday #lunaraurora

edit: grammar and spelling

#Morrn 🤘

Today i present one of the best but highly underrated #BlackMetal bands ever. #LunarAurora from #Germany. Enjoy.

https://album.link/de/i/1079888425

#NowPlaying #RandomMusickMayhem #Metal #Bavaria

Sun After Dark – Tatkraft Review

By Mystikus Hugebeard

Sun After Dark is an enigmatic new project that comes to us from one Benjamin König. He was a co-founding member and the principal composer of frigid black metal legends Lunar Aurora, which will surely excite my Dear and Hollow friend, but has very few listed musical credits since Lunar Aurora’s dissolution in 2012. In the interim, König has been a prolific artist, providing album artwork for bands like Botanist, Horna, Equilibrium, and so on. In fact, König’s artwork for Polar Veil by Hexvessel was even awarded 10th place on GardensTale’s Illustrious Artwork Extravaganza. Today, Herr König is cursed blessed with his first trve AMG review, for his first musical work in roughly a decade: Tatkraft.

At the risk of oversimplifying the myriad of musical ideas within Tatkraft, I would affectionately classify Tatkraft as blackened gothic metal. The opening volley efficiently demonstrates what Sun After Dark is about. “Dawn and Dirges” opens with a bevy of keyboard effects augmenting the guitars as they grow in intensity, launching into an immensely satisfying riff as the vocals appear. Thomas Helm (Empyrium, and the other permanent member of Sun After Dark) has a rich, operatic croon that contrasts nicely with Matthias Jell’s (Azathoth from Dark Fortress) nastier shrieks. “Waidmanns Hoffnung” shows visions of Tatkraft’s slower side, interspersing long passages of gloomy guitars and electronic drums with brief forays into blackened aggression. Like a medium-rare steak and red wine, the softer and heavier sides of Tatkraft pair deliciously. Tatkraft will often remind one of other bands—the vibes are a little bit The Vision Bleak, there’s some ambient traces of Lunar Aurora to be found, naturally, and Helm’s singular vocals cannot help but evoke Empyrium—but König balances the album’s sonic elements with finesse and creativity such that Tatkraft sounds wholly original throughout.

While the facets of Tatkraft complement each other well, the album’s greatest strength lies in König‘s inspired songwriting; the mashed potatoes with our steak and wine, if you will. Gnashing guitars (“Dawn and Dirges”), emotionally rich melodies (“Leaving Metropolis”), or folksy energy (“Schlittenfahrt”) hooks the listener straight away, until repeat listens reveal the layers of depth König has hidden behind the musicianship. In this regard, Tatkraft’s keyboards rival Atlas in weight carried. Flanging and warbling keyboards form a swirling tempest around the guitars in “Dawn and Dirges,” “Burning Blue,” “Antarctic Morning,” or they eke out a siren’s droning hum in “Waidmanns Hoffnung,” or any of the other infinite tiny tricks heard across the whole of Tatkraft. It’s all subtle and unobtrusive, and it’s a great way to utilize the negative space that makes for some wonderful moments like the blaring emergency honks atop chugging guitars towards the end of “Antarctic Morning.” The mix, by Victor Bullok of Triptykon, enables this depth to shine through while the moment-to-moment experience remains immediate and engaging.

What ultimately holds Tatkraft back from the higher score it deserves is a matter of focus. König is undoubtedly a talented songwriter with solid songcraft ideas, but these ideas infrequently culminate into a single, structurally satisfying whole. What highlights this are the sheer strength of “Burning Blue” and “Antarctic Morning,” where each sequence seamlessly flows into the next until reaching the climax. These songs do wield some of the strongest material in Tatkraft, so perhaps they’re unfairly advantaged. Still, there is a clear-cut and engaging progression to each song’s flow, which in turn highlights the opposite in “Ohne Grab” and “Schlittenfahrt.” Each song is similarly laden with strong ideas—I love the raking guitars that open “Ohne Grab” and the polka-inspired riffs of “Schlittenfahrt” (featuring Mosaic’s Martin Falkenstein) are a blast in a vacuum—but the flow is absent. The individual sequences in “Ohne Grab” are starkly different from one another, and the transitions between them lack any grace, while “Schlittenfahrt,” despite a strong core riff, feels incomplete, as if it were missing its second or third act. But ultimately, these rough edges do feel earned, not so much subtracting from the big picture but adding texture. No song on Tatkraft lacks in inspiration or sincerity, and boredom will be a foreign concept during your listening experience.

In the end, Tatkraft has made me an eager fan of Sun After Dark. There are a few things here and there to be ironed out, but I feel genuinely excited for Sun After Dark’s future. I shall be recommending Tatkraft to like-minded individuals, but when the day arrives, we get an album full of “Burning Blue”‘s and “Antarctic Morning”‘s, no god nor king could stop my blackened gothic crusade from spreading Sun After Dark to all.

Rating: Good!!
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hammerheart Records
Websites: facebook | bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025

#2025 #30 #BlackMetal #BlackenedGothic #DarkFortress #Empyrium #GermanMetal #GothicMetal #Jun25 #LunarAurora #Mosaic #Review #Reviews #SunAfterDark #Tatkraft #TheVisionBleak #Triptykon

Aspaarn – Oblations in Atrocity Review

By Dear Hollow

Shockingly, raw black metal isn’t really known for its accessibility. Its cult utilizes the most discordant of black metal’s already discordant approaches, but its worshipers may notice the range of barbed noise to cloaks of fuzz that populate lo-fi productions. Switzerland’s one-man raw black show Aspaarn utilizes both clarity and opacity alike to cast shadows of a dark wilderness worthy of its cover, with just enough reverb to lend a ghostly presence wandering amid the thickets and pines. While the stereotype lands in moonlit purple castles and catacombs of dust and shadows, there’s a distinctly wild and uncharted feeling about Aspaarn.

The phrase “raw black” doesn’t always wrap up neatly in a Nattens Madrigal-shaped box, and Aspaarn’s sound reflects this complexity. While reveling in that classic barbed clarity of Ildjarn, its ghostly haze recalls the likes of Revenant Marquis, adding to the disorientation. It ultimately ends up sounding a bit like Kryatjurr of Desert Ahd or El-Ahrairah: classically bleak and morbid black metal chord progressions wildly transfigured into a psychedelic and otherworldly visage. Composed of multi-instrumentalist Solaris Lupus, also of the likeminded Lord Valtgryftåke and Svartokunnighet, the Aspaarn project’s fourth full-length Oblations in Atrocity oscillates between second-wave frigid rawness and atmospheric wherewithal that never forsakes its teeth.

In spite of the genre of choice, Aspaarn’s instrumental attack is surprisingly clear, and Lupus’ grasp on songwriting is very firm. Layers of tremolo and bass lead the attack, with the inherent dissonance and minor keys giving Oblations in Atrocity a disorienting feeling (“Duty in Hecatomb,” “Boundless Hunger”), further emphasized by shifting tempos and rhythms, often taking a mad waltz reminiscent of Grave Pilgrim. Drums anchor this sound with precision and reliability, but a sharper trash-can-lid snare graces it a nimbleness that adds a distinct insanity to it as well (“The Order of Fear,” “Memories in Suffering”). Chord progressions are the backbone of every track and are directly rooted in classic Darkthrone’s permafrost soil, allowing its morbid and morose atmosphere to shine in the best possible way. The balance between clarity and opacity is key, as rawness and noise can tend to overwhelm basic musical movement, but Aspaarn’s deft hand manages to keep it surprisingly restrained.

While clarity adds that kvlt intensity and relentless attack, the tools guiding opacity in Oblations in Atrocity give it its supernatural lean. Vocals are most obvious right off the bat, with Lupus’ shrieks and roars cloaked in a thick veil of reverb, giving it a far more haunting feeling than many raw black metal stereotypes. When clean vocals are utilized, they take on a choral quality, nearly liturgical, driving home the album’s blasphemous atmosphere (“Silence of the Gods,” “All Reaching Misery”). One thing that puts Aspaarn in distinction is its ability to sound atmospheric without an overreliance on synths or keys, like genre greats Paysage d’Hiver or Lunar Aurora. In fact, there are very few obvious occurrences of “ambient” vestiges apart from the closer, which just drives home the second-wave worship that pervades Oblations in Atrocity.

For all the balance and atmospheric prowess Aspaarn offers with Oblations in Atrocity, it remains raw black metal, a particularly divisive and unfriendly take on an already divisive and unfriendly style. The vocals, while contributing to the otherworldly and supernatural feel in ways I saw as a clear highlight, are quite loud and can overwhelm the sound. The jarring tempo and rhythm changes, guided by the feral drumming, are an acquired taste but ultimately guide the labyrinthine panic and uncharted wilderness that course through the album. The first half of closer “All Reaching Misery” feels painfully directionless until the atmospheric passages give them purpose. What can I say, it’s raw black metal. Ultimately, Aspaarn has created an album that won’t change your mind about the style, but offers treats and bounties aplenty for those who like their music more with a generous side of pain.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Released
Website: töö kvlt för v
Releases Worldwide: February 15th, 2025

#2025 #30 #Aspaarn #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BlackMetal #Darkthrone #ElAhrairah #Feb25 #GravePilgrim #Ildjarn #KryatjurrOfDesertAhd #LordValtgryftåke #LunarAurora #OblationsInAtrocity #PaysageDHiver #RawBlackMetal #RevenantMarquis #Review #Reviews #SelfReleased #Svartokunnighet #SwissMetal #Ulver

For a tag I rarely toot: #RegionalRiffs:

#SearBliss: Chasm

https://song.link/m5z9bxsmqk3v5

#BlackMetal

FFO #Bornholm #ForestSilence #LunarAurora

#nowPlaying

Lunar Aurora - Hoagascht

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHVpdiVYWN4

#LunarAurora #Hoagascht #BlackMetal

#nowPlaying

Lunar Aurora - Hoagascht

So ertrage ich auch Musik mit Texten im bayrischen Dialekt 😅

Einen Link zu YT habe ich auf die schnelle nicht gefunden, daher gibts den Spotify-Link

https://open.spotify.com/album/7evQ48f5cecidsEs4IIvAZ?si=AE7o408SQiKRrCQo_3k9cQ

#LunarAurora #Hoagascht #BlackMetal

#nowPlaying

Trist - Willenskraft

Richtig gut! Danke @Herbstfreud für die Empfehlung!

#Trist #Willenskraft #BlackMetal #DarkAmbient #LunarAurora

#nowPlaying

Trist - Hin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtUXjyRJJQQ

#Trist #Hin #HinFort #Ambient #BlackMetal #AtmosphericBlackMetal #LunarAurora