#cryptdweller

Cryptdweller | Aeon Void | 2023

American Death Metal

Artwork by Matt Stikker

♰ Thaneros Crypt, with host @vida_lamour , will be digitalized live Saturday on the @famenightclub livestream. ♰

Given the font, artwork style, and overall pixellation of this art direction, one has a pretty good idea of what this project is based on, and the first notes of “Lost in the Dark Crypt” confirm that this project is steeped in CRPG aesthetics, and not in an immediately derivative way.

The first track is based around a tense four note pattern played once, then played again in a slightly different order - this repetition gives some urgency to this short release right from the beginning, while the melody is grounded with a tentative percussion and occasionally reinforced by a lower voice. The track pivots into a different key, ramping up the tension a bit further with some dissonant chord stabs, before returning to the original key. This makes simple but effective choices, somehow of a different feel than a lot of the more recent low-fi projects. “Candelight Waltz”, the second track, is based around a simple melody, sometimes played in two octaves, a bassline, and a suitably noisy 8-bit percussion element. There’s some phasing that seems to happen between the voices which play the melody, adding kind of a psychedelic effect to what is a repetitive but effective piece.

The final track, “Leaving the Crypt”, goes through a long sequence of bright-sounding chords that never seems to settle anywhere, somehow contradicting the title - are we really leaving the crypt, or are we just getting more lost? The buzzy synth chords and steady percussion make this tune especially hypnotic, despite the individual elements being relatively unremarkable. There’s a little sloppiness to the percussion, and maybe because of the long tones of the chords, this tune feels denser than the previous two, which makes it a nice album closer.