We headed down the highway to Portland, Oregon last week. While there I popped over to a shop called Dark Future that specializes in used, vintage role playing games, interested in seeing if I could unearth any old Paranoia modules or other gems. What I didn’t realize is that Dark Future also sells music, most notably (for me) dungeon synth. There was an entire rack of dungeon synth cassettes and they’d also just received a shipment from the speciality label HDK that I was allowed to rifle through. I had a great chat with Chuck who told me about what was happening in the Portland dungeon synth scene and made some recommendations, one of which was the prolific Portland-area artist Imp.
A disturbing church organ and set of bells usher us into the belltower as Tales From The Belltower opens, the organ climbing, climbing, climbing until the very end and leading into the tremolo bells of the next track, “Failed Exorcism”, the bells then giving way to… anguished, guttural choking, the clearest possible aural indication that one’s exorcism has, in fact, failed. The album continues in similar sonic space, one conjuring images of an old, dark church, the slow hand of decay scraping at its walls… floor… altar… bells… attempting to gradually subsume it back into the earth… or perhaps someplace even lower, down, deep below ground, to the place where the fallen “live”. The bells beseech the angels on “Belltower”, desperately crying out to be saved from the rot that is starting to consume the belltower, emerging again on “A Bright Blade in the Darkest Place”, a last-ditch effort to drive out the evil spirits seeking to tear it down. Closing with the sombre “Behind the Rusted Door” we’re still left with questions… who was victorious? Or is that the wrong question entirely…
If you’d like to check out Tales From The Belltower, and possibly even purchase a copy on cassette, check out the Imp Bandcamp page HERE.