What happens when you mix dungeon synth with a frozen landscape and a healthy dose of ambient? You get Mournelance.
Oublieth is one of the more fascinating modern dungeon synth artists. Their music somehow pays tribute to the olden times while still sounding modern. Derivative and innovative at the same time.
Mounelance falls within the wintersynth genre. Pictures of frozen tundra or snow covered mountain top are found within the six songs of Mornlance.
Oublieth takes typical dungeon synth's slowly repeating melodies and weaves them together over all-encompassing chords, all played on a keyboard of... questionable quality. Where Oubieth starts to differentiate themselves is with the melding of the ambient genre with the wintersynth. This isn't just dungeon synth, this is a fully realized ambient album with dungeon synth mixed in equal parts.
The symbiosis of the two genres turns out to be a great boon for Mornelance. Not only does it capture the old familiar feelings of early dungeon synth, it has a sense of grandeur brought in by the ambience. This marriage not only elevates the melodies, but also the entirety of the music. Mornelance is larger than the sum of its parts. It's a journey, complete with a destination, that we as listeners are being guided to during the albums playtime.
At the time of this writing, I think at this point the album has overstayed its welcome with me. Even though this is a fantastic dungeon synth album, I've been listening to it non stop for well over a day. Even the greatest albums in my collection have a hard time staying on the table for more than a few spins before I start craving something else. The fact that Mornlance has made it a dozen or so spins so far is a huge testament to the quality held within this spinny disk that makes music.
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