Hollow Earth myths and post-apocalyptic visions merge in this sonic descent into subterranean folklore, where lost civilizations and unseen beings haunt vast underground realms. Featuring artists like Dead Melodies, Beyond the Ghost, The Next Commuter, Northumbria, Dronny Darko, Claymation, and Ugasanie, these dark ambient soundscapes evoke ruined cities, cryptic transmissions, and shadowy creatures. Through dense drones and haunting textures, we’re guided into the aftermath of civilization—where memory, myth, and decay converge.
Where memory, myth, and decay converge
Hollow Earth legends have existed since ancient times, cities exist beneath a desert, which is where the people of Atlantis moved. These are the ancient times. Earth is entirely hollow and contains a large inner space, filled with ancient machinery, records and treasure, rather than being solid. Measurements of normal modes of vibration of Earth caused by large earthquakes are consistent with a liquid outer core. Deep earthquakes generate the most informative waves. Massive objects tend to clump together gravitationally, creating non-hollow spherical objects such as stars and planets. Dead Melodies, Beyond the Ghost, The Next Commuter, Northumbria, Dronny Darko, Claymation, Ugasanie, bring us the sounds of this cryptoterrestrial folklore as a premise for subterranean fiction, inhabited and operated by invisible mythological figures. I am here to guide you through the aftermath of civilization. A bleak tapestry of guitar-driven drones surrounds me as I am suspended in the darkness. But again, where am I? Here the wind blows me into the eternal darkness again. Strange creatures emerge and are seen on the surface of the Earth, their ancestors once emerged in ancient times from a subterranean land inside the Earth. Memories of the scorched earth have sounds, ghostly echoes of what once was will haunt me forever. Time unfolds across crumbling skylines and irradiated ruins.
“The Rotten and the Damned” (5:00) Dead Melodies
What I hear must be a weeping orchestra of strings, this post-apocalyptic excursion drifts through ash-covered cities with gigantic bugs and night creatures, the horror grows and bleeds spreading off into the distance. With every creature of that nightmare throng absorbed in their own personal shocking raptures, it might be barely possible for me to creep past to the faraway end of one of the staircases and ascend unseen; trusting to Fate and skill to deliver me to the upper reaches. The sound of something moving about in the darkness follows me, I am uncertain, something sad tragic dark pulsing is slowly unfolding, splintering flakes of strings behind a growling low buzz, I think I hear a hunting amphibian’s repeated call coming from the marsh. Now the lumbering monster is here and is closer than I expected. My ears, perversely shaken open, focused for an instant upon a spectacle which no human creature could even imagine without panic, fear and physical exhaustion. In another second, I could be alone in the accursed mansion, shivering and gibbering. I pray my memories will fade back into the fetid swamp this night.
“Embers to Ashes” (6:33) Beyond the Ghost
But I endure, and I know it was but a dream. Now I hear crashes in the cave, something is bashing about up there in the darkness. Things are fighting out there, big things. I fear that safety is lost here, there is no sanctuary. The dread of discovery and the pain that renewed exertion inflicted upon these sounds conspired to render that upward crawl, a thing of agonizing memory. The foot on the staircase lay, as I may have recounted, far away in shadow; it had to be so, my fear is to rise without a path to the dizzy, parapeted landing above the titanic aperture. There is an empty chamber so huge above us, will any of these things fall on us? And now, as I steeled myself to witness the rapt and sepulchral adorations of those nameless things, a thought of escape flashed upon me. The hall was dim, and the columns heavy with oppressive shadow. Everywhere else is darkness, the crashes gain weight and drama and above all, high above our shelter I hear a guitar twang and sizzling electronic clouds at play. I hear darkness everywhere and dig the wailing twang of doom, I will wait here forever while the heavens fall away.
“Shouts from the Open Window” (5:31) The Next Commuter
When the monster was almost upon me, it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes, extending it grotesquely, and from it, a terrible flash of fire erupted. Followed by a dense cloud of smoke. And a noise. A sound I can only compare to thunder. In slow motion the mountain trembled to its very foundations, the bedrock bucked beneath our feet. Somehow the machines continue to run out there, with a slow awakening the dawn brings clarity. I am not hearing any more shouts. From above something new approaches. Slowly coming into view, the ship is steady and powerful, it is another kind of being I expect, sustained by tones that come from out in space. I threw myself face down, clinging to the sparse vegetation, seized by a paroxysm of nervous agitation. The ship landed and then left in tones alone, the atmosphere is dark, the motors run on and on drones and buzzing. I was utterly unnerved, paralyzed by indecision. Then, a demon’s fury ripped through me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed to flee my body, and a malevolence more fiendish than any nightmare, nurtured by gin and despair, thrilled through every fiber of my frame. I am beyond the weakness of trying to connect cause and effect, to link this disaster to the atrocity. But then, mercifully, the reflection returned. I approached it. I touched it with my hand. I listened to the flying sounds inside the module. I know, with a grim certainty, that I have reached a point in this narrative where every listener will be shocked into disbelief. But it is my business, my grim duty, simply to continue this fade of slowness.
Recommended for fans of desolate soundscapes, dark drones and atmospheric storytelling ::
“Aftermath” (8:30) Northumbria
Lost in this waking dream, I walked for hours. The awakening glow was sustained by sheets of drone electronica. The mist deepened around me, swallowing everything, until I was reduced to a blind, fumbling crawl. To my ears, the feeling was getting churchy, I heard cathedral organ drones like light beams. An indescribable unease gnawed at me then, a nervous tremor that shook my very bones. My mood became dark yet affirming. I kept reflecting upon the recent loss and tragedy. The sound was sustained. I can see the ghost winds blowing, up in the far chapel enclosure. I feared to tread, to take another step, lest I plunge into some unseen abyss. Overwhelming, the memorial was dark difficult unrelenting. And then I remembered the old stories, the whispered warnings about these Ragged Hills, and the uncouth, fierce beings who live in their groves and caves. My wanderings through these haunted places had been many, and far-reaching, and often solitary. The interest, the chilling fascination that had drawn me into these dim, deep valleys, or made me gaze into the reflected heaven of a bright lake, had been sharpened by the terrifying knowledge that I was utterly alone. I found myself at the foot of a towering mountain, looking down into a vast plain, through which a majestic river twisted like a dying serpent. The village was nestled in a perfectly circular valley, about a quarter-mile wide, surrounded by gentle hills whose summits the people had never dared to cross. Their reason? Simple. They didn’t believe there was anything on the other side.
“My Heart Laid in Fields of Moss” (6:00) Apocryphos
The sound of a sad dark movie. Close contact with the utterly bizarre often proves more terrifying than inspiring, and it brought me no solace to reflect that this very stretch of dusty road was the place where those monstrous tracks and that dark green ichor had been discovered. The sound melts, with growing tension and intensity, light rays travel in circular paths, and slow as they approach the center of the spherical star-filled cavern. I know that the creature is crying, after moonless nights of fear and death. As I shiver and brood upon the casting of that brain-blasting shadow, I know that I have at last pried out one of Earth’s supreme horrors, one of those nameless blights from outer voids, whose faint, daemonic scratchings we sometimes perceive on the farthest rim of space, yet from which our finite vision has mercifully granted us immunity. Yes, we are all ending up alone in the cave. One man entered the tunnel and never returned, perhaps to lead inside the Earth to a land inhabited by a mysterious tribe. The old fables, their forefathers emerged in ancient times from an underground land, a wonderful land of greenery, animals, lakes, a central sun and many of their ancestors still remain inside the Earth. At the end, the funeral group slowly exits and we are left even more alone.
“Epiphany” (8:59) Dronny Darko (feat. Claymation)
The sunset is a gorgeous spectacle, and now the moon ascends, nearly full, casting a silver flood over the plain, the distant mountainside, and the curious low mounds that rise here and there. In my mind I am under water, deep so dark, always and again waking up after the crash. There exist black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then, some evil soul breaches a passage through them. The sound of no way out with some time left. When, two days after my frightful crawl through that crypt of eyes and claws, I experienced virtual convulsions of fright. I heard the orchestra in the dark wet cave where we watched helplessly as the light fades into death, slower and slower until the fade pauses. Here the end is gone and here we are, tragedy burning slowly without flames, slowly creeping downward. I try but the end is hard to see because of the darkness. We watch a movie about dying. Then, a sound emanated from that inky, boundless, farther distance, a sound I believed I recognized.
“Forced to Live” (8:40) Ugasanie
There are UFOs coming from inside the Earth. So quiet out there in the dark void. Haunting textures and slow-burning distortion, a distant melodic decay. I must ask, how many huge caves can there be? There only needs to be one and it is beyond huge. It was not a wholesome landscape after dark, and I believe I would have perceived its morbidity even had I been ignorant of the terror that stalked there. I fear the light touches nothing dangerous until about a third of the way in, after the death, waking up in the cold darkness. It would have been less unsettling had the stray accounts of these things not agreed so perfectly. The sound of louder echoey metal stress, an acoustic hollow body guitar with metal strings is played, and so the story is true. The guitar answers guitar back and forth, the melody goes, darkness approaches because darkness constantly approaches, with the black wind. Of wild creatures, there were no others. They possess a primal wisdom when death leers close. I suspect that it’s only one guitar. No, no. It can be two sometimes. The ancient, lightning-scarred trees seemed unnaturally large and twisted, and the other vegetation unnaturally thick and feverish, while curious mounds and hummocks in the weedy, fulgurite-pitted earth recalled images of snakes and dead men’s skulls swollen to gigantic proportions. We are left with a hollow wind, overwhelming wind and afterwards, the water coming past the beach up and up hissing.
Written, Produced, Performed: Dead Melodies, Beyond the Ghost, The Next Commuter, Northumbria, Dronny Darko, Claymation and Ugasanie. Compiled by Oleg Puzan. Artwork & Mastering by Simon Heath.
Echoes of the Hollow Earth is available on Cryo Chamber. [Bandcamp]
