For the Innermost

The glorious year 2025 has finally drawn to a close, and I say glorious for objective and subjective reasons alike. Objective, because it was one of the best years for dark ambient in a long while, with a plethora of well-known scene names releasing excellent new albums after the relative lull of the post-COVID period, but also some notable newcomers making their mark. Subjective, because it was the first full year of operations for the resurrected For the Innermost, during w

Event name: Blåsvart Aften #1 7 Artists: Wasteland Transmissions (NO) / Vonbroten (NO) / Nortfalke (NL) / Mortifero (NL) Venue: Good Omens Location: Trondheim, Norway Date: 29th November 2025 Exactly 8 months to the day after the previous edition, I made my already customary November trip back to Trondheim for another edition of its legendary dark ambient gathering. Having spent the previous rowdy night in Copenhagen, where I had too much alcohol and too little sleep, I was

Artist: New Risen Throne Album: The Journey to Reach the Fathers Label: Cyclic Law Release date: December 2025 Whatever your favourite flavour of this genre, there's no denying that New Risen Throne releasing a new album ought to be one of the most important dark ambient events of the year in anyone's calendar. This relatively reclusive Italian artist, part of the Cyclic Law pantheon from the mid-2000s, is definitely not the most prolific out there, releasing merely four bona

Artist: Wolfskin Album: Ring of Spheres Label: Cyclic Law Release date: December 2025 For all the nicheness of dark ambient as a genre, I still to this day come across artists having been creating music for decades who I was blissfully unaware of (to my discredit). Such is the case with the Portuguese musician Johan Aernus, who has been releasing ritual ambient works under the name Wolfskin for no less than three decades now. It took Cyclic Law releasing his latest album Ring

Date: 29/11/2025 Place: Trondheim, Norway Since first releasing music under this name almost a decade ago, Nortfalke has managed to profile himself as one of the finest purveyors of dungeon synth out there. In fact, he's among the artists who got me hooked on the genre in the first place, owing to his reverence for atmosphere above all and his willingness to go beyond the habitual restrictions of the genre in the pursuit of true aural storytelling, with his impressive live p