Dark Ambient Review: Watcher at the Gates

Review By Casey Douglass

Album Cover

Watcher at the Gates is a dark ambient album from Kehseverin, aka Wesley Hiatt. I’ve reviewed a number of Wesley’s dark creations in previous months, and he always has a knack for creating tense, gritty spaces and distorted soundscapes. Watcher at the Gates is another album full of dark feelings; the heavy, fuzzy sounds rubbing against bleak field-recordings and seemingly simple yet effective tones and melodies.

One of my favourite tracks is My Solemn Oath. It opens with a low muffled rumbling and contains a pulsing atmosphere that presses and pressures the ears. A buzzing tone soon joins, smearing an ominous fuzzy feeling over the soundscape. As the track progresses, a trundling/engine-like sound joins, and also, a more energetic tone that seems to have the aspect of bashed piano notes, but notes that are muffled at the edges by distortion. This felt like a murky, pressurized track to me, and it was great to listen to.

Another track that stood out for me was Soliloquy. It begins with a pulsing high tone, a slightly lower tone dragged along as its companion. A bass hum joins things, and the tones stretch and buzz and fuzz as things deepen. The best way I could describe this track is like the audio equivalent of watching dappled sunlight on a disintegrating concrete wall. The sickly tree that’s casting the shadow is wilting and suffocated by the environment around it, its dead leaves hanging like broken promises. The tree’s shadow however, looks strangely perfect. That’s how I’d describe the feelings that this track brought to the surface for me.

The last track that I'll mention is Upon Rooftops, as I found this to be particularly dark. An agitated buzzing grows in each ear, a warm bass tone pushing and sighing from beneath. This feels like another fuzzy, “staticy” track. After awhile, a leafy rustling begins, roaming from ear to ear. A deep simple melody warbles and pulses beneath. The sound of rain emerges near the midpoint, with softer, high tones impinging as the track nears its end. This track felt like it contained the ceaseless attempts of something grating against the harshness of reality. The dominant rustling sound just might be a struggling bird trapped behind a boarded up window, the choice between standing still or fluttering left, right and back again apparently its only option. A track that embodies the emotion of futility.

Watcher at the Gates is bleak yet warm, sad yet brave. Sometimes in life, you just need to drink in the misery that you feel, simply because doing anything else seems like deluding yourself or being untrue. In doing so, you might just experience a little space opening up around the things that bother you or that you feel are dragging you down. Watcher at the Gates might just provide the audio accompaniment to this.

Visit the Watcher at the Gates page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Watcher at the Gates

Album Artist: Kehseverin

Label: VoidSoundLTD

Released: 3 May 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Shapeshifter

Review by Casey Douglass

Album Cover

At one point or another, who hasn’t wanted to turn into someone, or something, else? I know I’ve wanted to, many many times. Something more powerful, less afraid, more capable. Kehseverin’s dark ambient album Shapeshifter seems to be the soundtrack for just such a change, the track names hinting at some kind of werewolf skin-shedding going on.

The first track, Bitter Root, caused me to think about someone watching TV and getting high. Maybe this person isn’t even looking for a “change”, but just wants the discomfort or the pain of life to go away for awhile. The track opens with a kind of cacophonous, channel-jumping feel, a droning tone coming along for the ride. A piercing metallic tone also emerges, the soundscape seeming to swell and loom as the listener hears snatches of TV voices. A little later, a blaring horn-like tone sounds and a low hum begins. The soundscape seems to shimmer and to fill with a bouncing fuzz. Near the end, a static-like rain falls and things start to feel lighter, like the change has already taken place and things already feel a little bit better for it.

Next up comes Lycanthropy, a track that seems to further cement the transformation that has occurred. It begins with small crackles and a bassy drone. An echoing space opens up, and a very faint chant-like tone seems to suggest itself in the far distance. A pregnant pulsing tone begins, joined by an expanding electronic melody with bouncing notes and jaunty, retro-horror energy. A buzzing shimmer floats in the air. At this point the soundscape feels quite discordant and brooding. In the second half of the track, as things come to a close, a wind or crowd-noise sound can be heard, a quiet melody echoing away too. For me, this either meant that the TV watcher was still high and out of their mind with sport on the TV, or they’d ventured into the woods to run and to hunt and to do bestial things.

The final track is Overlapping Consciousness. This track really did seem to suggest an outdoor space. It opens with wind, knocking trees and gritty flowing water or rain. All of these familiar sounds are manipulated into an echoey, strange-sounding version of themselves. There is an insect-like buzz, bird chirping and a deep vibrating tone. The “outside” feel of this track persists throughout, and it makes me wonder where the newly transformed person is going. A morose melody begins near the midpoint, before the sounds of nature re-emerge more strongly again towards the end. Maybe the wanderer is revelling in the feeling and the sensing of everything, even what the creatures of the landscape are feeling and seeing. It’s a great track, one where the everyday sounds of nature sound so amplified and sinister.

Shapeshifter is a brief dark ambient album, and while this adds to its punch, I would have been equally happy if it contained a few more tracks to enjoy. It is an album full of vibrating atmospheres and a strange malevolence, a soundtrack to the otherworldly in a rare instance when it encroaches on this reality. I like how it seemed to anchor stuff in the mundanity of the everyday, and then warped it into something that would be great fodder for an 80s horror flick.

Visit the Shapeshifter page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given access to a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Shapeshifter

Album Artist: Kehseverin

Label: VOIDSOUNDLTD

Released: 2 Feb 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Awaken The Flesh

Review by Casey Douglass

Any horror fan worth their salt has likely seen any number of flicks set in the rural middle of nowhere, creaking cabins and crinkled leaves the canvas often covered by blood and gore once things kick off. Kehseverin’s Awaken The Flesh is a dark ambient album that hooks into the same feelings that these horrors do, those sensations of strangeness and isolation. I’d also bet that, on first seeing the cover art above, some of your first thoughts might just have been about The Evil Dead.

As you might imagine from an album with a title like Awaken The Flesh, the sounds you will find in its soundscapes are all suitably grim, ominous and unnerving. One of the early tracks: Descent, is a great example. It opens with a low rumbling and a grainy, “pot boiling” sound. There is a hint of flies buzzing, a hint of wind, and for me, the growing sense that this is clearly some cannibal’s house. It just makes the most sense. There is a grinding feeling to the soundscape, rustling leaves, and what might be the sound of creeping insects. Add in the fizz of a detuned radio or TV, and you’ve got your own grim cabin scene right there.

The next track: Absolutes, is just as dark. This one opens with a low tone, and I thought that I could hear wind or rain. A deeper bass rumbling joins the low tone. A fuzzing, vibrating tone depicts a sad melody, like a beetle buzzing around, looking for a window. I might have heard whispers at the edge of the vibrating sound in places too. For me, the best way to describe this track is, if insects could chant and do their own little devil worshipping rites, this might just be what it would sound like. Is your house infested with Satanic cockroaches? Is there such a thing as a priest bug exterminator? I guess you could mix the pesticide with the holy water in the spray gun...

Horizon is another fun track. I say fun, in the same way that you might enjoy watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as that is the film that this track set me thinking about. Horizon begins with a smooth, undulating drone. A short time later, a kind of spinning aesthetic creeps in, a bit like a spinning-top beginning to whirl faster and faster. This is where I thought of the sunrise scene in so many horrors, the blood covered victim gaining new strength from seeing the night sky turn orange. It wasn’t a big jump from that, to remembering Leatherface’s chainsaw spinning tantrum. Not that I heard a chainsaw, but everything else just felt like “horror sunrise” to me.

The final track I want to talk about is Confluence. This is another buzzing, vibrating track, that put me in mind of cannibals again. There is a tin-lid-scraping kind of beat that had me thinking about someone rummaging through old baked bean tins. An electronic rising tone begins, like the hum of a power core. A little later the soundscape turns into a dense, clanking space. Some of the clanking could very well be the flapping of corrugated metal. Maybe the action didn’t take place in a cabin but above an abandoned mine. Maybe this track is a little The Hills Have Eyes. Another fun one, whatever it is.

Awaken The Flesh is a journey into the unnerving backwaters of the horror genre. The kinds of places where people neither care for the rules of society, nor lose sleep over making use of whatever meat is handy. The soundscapes vibrate with hate, poverty and fear, and the listener gets to sample these unnerving places from the comfort of their own, hopefully safer, surroundings. I loved it.

Visit the Awaken The Flesh page on Bandcamp for more information. Check out Descent below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Awaken The Flesh

Album Artist: Kehseverin

Label: VoidSoundLTD

Released: 27 Nov 2020

Dark Ambient Review: Nocturn

Review by Casey Douglass

Nocturn Album Art

When I sat down to write this review of Kehseverin’s dark ambient album Nocturn, I found that my understanding of the word “Nocturn” was partly wrong. I thought it was another way of referring to the night, and it is, but it seems to have its roots in some Christian rites that had to be observed at night as well. I guess I’ve learned my thing for the day. Nocturn is an album that takes the nocturnal hours as its muse, featuring low, dark-in-feeling soundscapes and melodies that blanket the listener, much as night might blanket the view through your window.

Amongst is one of my favourite tracks. It opens with an airy drone, one with a kind of grinding quality behind it. A shimmering tone builds, sending reverberating judders through the soundscape. This track caused my imagination to conjure up a dark forest glade with a strange, ancient stone archway inside, fairy-lights crackling around and through it. The track becomes more mellow and gentle as it approaches its midpoint, maybe hinting that the listener has passed through the portal. An ominous rumbling begins a short time later, joined by gentle pops and crackles in the ear, and later, some wind. Maybe the portal doesn’t point to anywhere nice...

Another track that I enjoyed was Upon A Hill. This track opens with gusts of wind and a gentle puttering sound, like a very unhealthy heart-beat. There are grainy clicks, swirls of movement, and a roaming electronic tone that throbs in the air. I felt that this track had a general feeling of malice about it, and daydreamed a lone figure on a hilltop, watching across a valley. When the Moon comes out, the figure is gone, but their shadow is still in place on the ground. It’s a furtive, looming feeling.

Eclipsed is another track that I felt contained its fair share of malice. It begins with an uneasy metallic drone, a little like a steam engine hissing and grinding to life. Rather than steam however, this one might just be ejecting spumes of ectoplasm and dust. Big tones hold long notes, the sound underneath sometimes feeling like it takes on a chittering, rotating aspect. The second half of the track deepens into an ominous space, the sound a little like a dark sacral chant. I’m not sure what is being eclipsed, and by what, but it sounds nice and brooding.

Nocturn is an album in which some of the tracks feature more melody than others. For me and my own dark ambient taste, I think I gravitated more to the ominous, droning spaces in the tracks above, and to the ones with very slow melodies, but I did enjoy the more musical tracks too. All of the tracks shared the same kind of midnight murk and muted peace, the furtive silence of the night rubbing up against uneasy shadows and encroaching dreams. If you like your dark ambient low-toned and dark, but that livens up with some faster melodies at times, you should check out Nocturn.

Visit the Nocturn page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Nocturn

Album Artist: Kehseverin

Label: VoidSoundLTD

Released: 02 Dec 2020