Month: December 2022

Darkwave was born from a fascination with intensity, complexity, and atmosphere, but over the years it gradually became something more: a search for meaning through music. Although rooted in progressive, thrash, and symphonic metal, Darkwave has never been particularly interested in stylistic boundaries. Heavy guitars coexist with orchestral arrangements, church organ, folk influences, electronic textures, neoclassical motifs, and occasional ventures into more experimental territory. These elements are rarely combined according to a predetermined formula. Instead, they emerge naturally from the needs of each composition and the ideas it seeks to express.

Many artists have shaped this approach. The intricate guitar work of Hank Shermann and Michael Denner, the monumental soundscapes of Tony Iommi, the adventurous spirit of bands such as Mekong Delta and Atheist, and above all the creative vision of Jon Lord have all left a lasting mark on Darkwave’s musical identity. What unites these influences is not genre, but a willingness to bridge seemingly distant worlds and create something larger than the sum of its parts.

Yet influences and techniques are only part of the story. For me, music has never been an end in itself. Composition is not merely an exercise in complexity, virtuosity, or experimentation. The technical aspects of music matter, but they are ultimately tools rather than goals. What matters most is the idea behind the music.

Every Darkwave album begins with a question. Questions about mortality and meaning, faith and doubt, loss and hope, suffering and transcendence. The music serves as a language through which these questions can be explored beyond the limits of words alone.

At its best, music becomes more than sound. It becomes a meeting place between thought and emotion, between the personal and the universal, between what can be explained and what can only be felt.

That is what Darkwave ultimately strives to create.

Darkwave began as a personal challenge: to create music entirely on my own terms. What started as a one-man recording project gradually evolved into something far larger – a vehicle for exploring questions of mortality, meaning, faith, loss, hope, and transcendence. Each album became not only a musical statement, but also a reflection of a particular stage in that journey.

Although the dream of composing and recording my own music had been with me for decades, the first demos of Hexapla began to take shape only in the second half of 2020. Created in a modest but well-equipped home studio, the album emerged during a period of both excitement and uncertainty. For the first time, I found myself responsible for every aspect of the creative process: composing, performing, recording, mixing, mastering, and eventually sharing the music with the world. At times, the scope of the challenge felt overwhelming. I even considered abandoning the project altogether. Yet music had always been one of the most meaningful forms of expression in my life, and the desire to communicate through it ultimately proved stronger than doubt. I wanted to know whether the emotions and ideas that had accompanied me for so many years could resonate with others as well.

Looking back, Hexapla represents something more than a debut album. It was the discovery of my personal musical language. Many of the elements that would later become characteristic of Darkwave first came together here: old-school metal riffing, progressive structures, orchestral textures, and a willingness to cross stylistic boundaries in search of something uniquely my own. Released on August 3, 2021, Hexapla was an instrumental album, as all Darkwave releases would remain until 2025. Built around the idea of unity in diversity, it sought to merge thrash metal with a wide range of influences while maintaining a coherent artistic identity. The concept extended beyond the music itself, from the song titles to the cover artwork created in collaboration with my longtime friend, photographer Dávid Ujhelyi.

As an independent musician with limited promotional resources, I had few expectations regarding the album’s reception. To my surprise, Hexapla reached a growing audience and even entered SoundCloud’s RepostExchange Pop/Rock Top 40. More importantly, however, it confirmed something I had not fully realized before: Darkwave was no longer simply an idea. It had become a reality.

The creative process did not stop there. The more I experimented, the more I felt compelled to revisit and refine the album’s sonic world. This eventually led to Hexapla – The Remasters in 2022, a reimagined version that reflected both growing experience and a clearer artistic vision. The release received an enthusiastic response and was featured in Bandcamp’s New and Notable section shortly after its release.

Even as I was completing the remixed and remastered version of Hexapla, my thoughts were already focused on what would come next. The songwriting for Missa Innominata had begun almost immediately after the release of my debut album, and by the time the updated Hexapla appeared in 2022, I was already deeply immersed in recording its successor.

If Hexapla represented the discovery of a personal musical language, Missa Innominata became an exploration of how far that language could be expanded. While remaining rooted in metal, the album drew heavily from the monumental atmosphere of classical sacred music, liturgical traditions, and orchestral composition. It sought to unite the expressive power of metal with the grandeur and timelessness often associated with religious music. During the recording process, I even experimented with adding vocals for the first time. Although the idea was ultimately abandoned because the results did not meet my own standards, it foreshadowed a direction that Darkwave would eventually pursue years later. Released on June 1, 2022, Missa Innominata marked an important step forward both musically and conceptually. Looking back, it was the first Darkwave album to seriously engage with themes and aesthetics that would later become central to works such as Horror Sacri. The sacred, the transcendent, and the search for meaning began to emerge not only as artistic influences, but as recurring questions within the music itself.

The album received an even warmer reception than its predecessor, with one of its tracks reaching both the RepostExchange Pop/Rock Top 40 and the platform’s overall Top 40 chart. More importantly, however, Missa Innominatademonstrated that the creative path opened by Hexapla was not a one-time experiment, but the beginning of something much larger.

By the time work began on Thanatology, Darkwave had become far more than a creative outlet. What started as a personal recording project was gradually evolving into my primary form of artistic expression, a place where music, philosophy, emotion, and personal experience could converge.

The years leading up to the album were marked by constant growth. I refined my production techniques, expanded my technical skills as both musician and sound engineer, and continued searching for new ways to translate increasingly complex ideas into music. Yet the most significant development was not technical, but conceptual. Released on August 3, 2023, exactly two years after Hexapla, Thanatology became the most personal Darkwave album up to that point. More than a collection of compositions, it was a meditation on mortality, impermanence, and the fragile nature of human existence. Through its music, the album explored questions that had gradually moved closer to the center of my artistic vision: how we confront death, how we find meaning in a finite life, and how we live in the shadow of our own impermanence.

Looking back, Thanatology marked a turning point. While earlier releases had explored atmosphere, musical identity, and transcendence, this album brought existential questions fully into focus. Many of the themes that would later define Horror Sacri and Evanescent Horizons can already be found here in their earliest form.

The response exceeded anything I had previously experienced. The album attracted attention not only within the SoundCloud community but also among independent reviewers and metal publications. Metal Has No Borders included Thanatology among its Album of the Month honorable mentions, and the album later received Bronze Tier recognition in the publication’s Readers’ Metal Album of the Year poll. In addition, Thanatology became the first Darkwave album to receive a physical CD release, with a limited edition of 100 copies. More importantly, however, it confirmed that Darkwave had evolved into something larger than a musical project alone. It had become an ongoing exploration of the questions that would continue to shape every album that followed.

The years following Thanatology brought another period of transformation. In 2024, I undertook a comprehensive revision of the Darkwave catalog, remixing, remastering, and in some cases substantially reworking the project’s earlier releases. At the same time, I had the opportunity to collaborate with talented artists, explore new creative directions, and build friendships with musicians and listeners from around the world. Yet the most significant change occurred while I was working on demos for what would become the next album.

For years, Darkwave had been an instrumental project. Although I had occasionally considered adding vocals in the past, I had always concluded that the music itself was sufficient. This time, however, something felt different. The ideas I wanted to express had become increasingly philosophical, personal, and narrative in nature. Eventually, I realized that the next stage of Darkwave’s evolution required a voice. That realization led to Horror Sacri, released on August 21, 2025. If Thanatology confronted mortality, Horror Sacri confronted transcendence. Drawing from sacred imagery, biblical symbolism, and personal reflection, the album explored faith, doubt, spiritual collapse, and the search for meaning in a world that often appears silent. Rather than offering answers, it examined the tension between belief and uncertainty, hope and despair, longing and disillusionment.

The introduction of vocals transformed Darkwave in fundamental ways. For the first time, ideas that had previously been expressed through atmosphere and instrumental storytelling could be explored directly through language. Yet despite this change, the album remained faithful to the project’s core identity, combining progressive and symphonic metal with orchestral arrangements, church organ, and a strong conceptual focus.

Looking back, Horror Sacri represents one of the most important turning points in the history of Darkwave. It expanded the project’s expressive possibilities while bringing its philosophical concerns into sharper focus than ever before. The questions that had emerged gradually throughout Hexapla, Missa Innominata, and Thanatology now stood at the very center of the music.

In many ways, Horror Sacri was the album that made the next chapter possible.

Personalizing a website is always the hardest part of the job – inevitable, yet oddly fun. As someone who’s a complete introvert among strangers but (almost) an extrovert within my circle of friends, I’ll attempt to offer a glimpse into my inner drives and motivations. Hopefully, this will shed some light on my love for music and the countless influences that eventually led to the birth of Darkwave.

J.R.R. Tolkien, one of my favorite authors, once wrote: “I have exposed my heart to be shot at.” But let’s be honest – being shot down is a privilege reserved for the strong and famous. I have no such illusions. As an independent artist, I can expose my heart freely, knowing that no one’s really aiming at it. And in many ways, that’s a true advantage.

I’ve always been a music enthusiast. If listening to music for 6-8 hours a day doesn’t qualify someone as one, then I don’t know what does. No matter how much I’ve explored other artistic forms – poetry, writing, drawing – music has always been at the center of my life. It’s not just an interest; it’s the core of who I am.

Being an independent artist is a liberating experience. No management, no booking agencies, no record labels – just me, doing my best to create something true to myself, free from external expectations. Yes, working alone can be tough, but most of the time, I simply sit in front of my computer, translating emotions and thoughts into waveforms. There’s a purity in that process, a kind of unfiltered honesty that feels more direct than words ever could.

As a neuroscientist by profession, I’m keenly aware of the flaws in language – how our individual perceptions shape and distort even the simplest words. Music, however, operates on a different level. It’s more complex yet more instinctive, a raw and deeply emotional form of communication. It has its own traps and challenges, but it also has the power to express things that words never can.

And that, in the end, is why I do what I do.