Hekaloth Records, 2007–2009

Hekaloth Records is a bizarre one-man avant-garde dungeon synth project/label from Vancouver, Canada, releasing five albums from 2007 to 2009.

Aliases and projects are: Thursar (Journey to Jotunheim), Shevalreq (Tournament at Constantinople & The Siege of Albraca), Xynfonica (A Feast for Famished Ravens), and Gluttony (The Fall of the Roman Republic).

Basically all of the music was performed on guitar through a Roland GI-20 guitar-to-MIDI interface instead of a keyboard, and it definitely sounds like it.

Every album follows essentially the same formula: extremely dense and intricate long-form narrative "spoken word" poetry delivered in a black metal growl over freeform guitar-to-MIDI digital instruments, usually in short looping sections. This guy is playing MIDI panflute on guitar, and it doesn't sync perfectly to his playing.

Googling any of the lyrics will send you on a historical literature deep dive. Literally no line is wasted, but unfortunately you can't understand any of them. There used to be lyrics on his website (available through the Wayback Machine) , but they don't seem to be archived.

His website is still a great place to find more info either way.

My favorite album by him is Journey to Jotunheim, which is also my #2 favorite dungeon synth album of all time and my biggest direct inspiration for my work as Damage Cloud. He is genuinely my biggest influence on the way I mix dungeon synth, letting the raw-as-fuck dry MIDI tone speak for itself.

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More info can be found on his website and Discogs .