Azbac — Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds Review
Azbac is a volcanic dungeon synth solo project from São Miguel Island, Azores, Portugal. On 2 May 2026, Azbac released the independent full-length, Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds.
Azbac, Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds Review: This review will evaluate every aspect of the album, from its intricate musical composition to its production.
The First Three Sins, The Summary
The First Sin, The Strings/Keys: Dense synthesisers, subterranean drones, and ash-like textures transform Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds into a vast geological soundscape rather than traditional dungeon synth. The Second Sin, The Vocals: There are no vocals within Azbac’s volcanic descent; instead, manipulated field recordings and atmospheric pressure become the album’s true voice. The Third Sin, The Percussions: Synthesised seismic pulses and cavernous low-frequency impacts mimic tectonic movement rather than conventional percussion.
The Fourth Sin, Overall Discussion
Severing the Modern World
Before pressing play, understand that this is music for total disconnection. It demands you sit down, forget the constraints of modern technology, secure your headphones tightly, and lose yourself entirely to the magma. This is not your typical dungeon synth — this is geological dungeon synth. It is a new terrain entirely: Volcanic Dungeon Synth.
The Volcano Awakens
As soon as the play button is pressed, the listener is welcomed by a soundscape that feels less like a traditional album and more like a vast cinematic score structured as a linear, geological narrative.
This auditory eruption is directly inspired by the Capelinhos Volcano and the broader volcanic memory of the Azores, translating deep-earth history into a sprawling sonic landscape.
The Eightfold Descent
Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds is a beautifully composed and arranged work spanning eight distinct movements. By prioritising immense spatial depth and layered textural movement, the record simulates active magmatic flow and the geological isolation characteristic of the archipelago.
The journey traces a linear timeline, beginning in pristine forest environments and dissolving into the absolute acoustic void of cooled ash.
- Hymn I — low-intensity forest soundscapes; tension builds toward volcanic rupture.
- Hymn II — subterranean pulses and dense synth pressure representing magma carving its way through rock beneath the surface.
- Hymn III — maritime field recordings merging with slow synth layers to depict lava reaching the coast.
- Hymn IV — minimalist, cavernous textures with geothermal field recordings.
- Hymn V — suspended, fog-like atmospheres creating zero visibility beneath the suffocating weight of the primary ash cloud.
- Hymn VI — cyclic subterranean rhythms representing internal geological pressure from deep within the earth’s mantle.
- Hymn VII — high-frequency particles, irregular rhythms, abrasive textures.
- Hymn VIII — low-frequency stagnation and cooling minerals; the album’s final void.
Synthesisers Beneath the Crust
Azbac’s palette is forged through the complete omission of electric instruments, traditional percussion, and vocals. The entire atmospheric soundscape is constructed solely through digital synthesisers and original field recordings.
Rather than functioning as traditional melodic instruments, the synthesisers behave like shifting environmental forces — slow-moving, oppressive, and immense in scale.
The synthesisers do not play melodies in the traditional dungeon synth sense. Instead, they drive the narrative like lava crawling through an isolated valley, behaving like raw elemental forces rendered electronically:
- Subterranean Drones — long, low-frequency pads that simulate crushing magma pressure beneath the crust.
- Granular Textures — high-friction crackles representing ashfall, particulate movement, and volcanic haze.
- Slow-attack Brass-like Swells — heavy, monolithic chords that evoke the agonisingly slow shifting of tectonic plates.
- High-resonance Harmonic Layers — piercing, ethereal layers that mirror geothermal steam escaping through fissure resonance.
- Filtered Noise Beds — sweeping, suffocating layers of wind, choking ash clouds, and collapsing planetary crust.
The Earth Speaks
If the synthesisers represent the energy of the eruption, the original field recordings act as the earth’s physical voice, forming the core of the album’s identity. These regional captures are never left raw — instead, Azbac stretches, pitches, layers, and treats them until they mutate into quasi-musical tectonic textures that are seamlessly woven into the mix:
- Forest Ambience (hymn I) — the fragile, living surface layer before the rupture.
- Geothermal Vents — hissing steam, bubbling mud, and high-pressure subterranean releases.
- Coastal Lava Interactions — the violent, steaming collisions of ocean waves striking hot volcanic rock.
- Wind Across Calderas — hollow, sweeping white noise captured across vast, empty craters.
- Footsteps on Ash and Pumice — gritty, rhythmic percussive textures that signify a lonely trek through the debris.
- Subterranean Rumble Simulations — heavily processed, low-end simulations of fault lines fracturing deep below.
Seismic Ritual Percussion
Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds employs no traditional drums whatsoever. What initially resembles percussion is actually low-frequency digital synthesis sculpted into violent seismic pulses.
These are not percussion samples; they are synthesised impacts, sculpted to evoke massive geological phenomena:
- Low-End Sine Bursts (with long decay) — sub-bass frequencies tailored to trick the ear into feeling a monolithic drum. They mimic the terrifying pressure waves of active volcanic eruptions.
- Layered Noise Bursts — textured, white-noise transients that sound like heavy mallets striking colossal surfaces. They evoke the echoing density of magma chamber resonance.
- Sub-bass Pulses — deep, foundational frequencies that provide the physical thud of tectonic movement and collapsing planetary rock.
- Granular Impacts — microtonal crackles and sharp, brief transients that simulate massive ash or rock displacement.
- Reverb Chambers — expansive digital spaces that grant the synthesised impacts a cavernous, film-score-like scale.
Azbac’s drum-like synth pulses closely resemble the Taiko, Timpani, or Gran Cassa styles utilised in epic film scores:
- Low-frequency Dominance — heavily weighted to the dark end of the sonic spectrum.
- Long reverb tails — allowing the sound to echo across vast, imagined landscapes.
- Slow, Ritualistic, and Massive — massive, spaced-out strikes that mimic the slow build-up of pressure.
- Non-rhythmic or Minimally Rhythmic — prioritising spatial atmosphere over danceable or predictable cadences.
Standing at the Caldera Rim
The recording feels captured on the very rim of the Azorean calderas, shaped by wind, ash, and the slow breath of the earth — as though the volcanic landscape itself imprinted its presence into every movement.
The Final Ashen Silence
Overall, Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds is a forbidden fruit of art. The whole composition does not feel rushed; each movement progresses with a slow, tectonic weight rather than conventional melody-driven structures. The geological journey finally closes with the final hymn, Crypt of the Ashen Crater, leaving the listener at the absolute end of the volcanic descent — shrouded in silence and cooling minerals.
The Fifth Sin, The Memorabilia
For me, Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds is a rare artifact — it feels like stumbling by chance upon a lost David Attenborough field recording. What makes it truly unforgettable is how Azbac has mutated the genre, reshaping dungeon synth into something entirely his own. It is a sonic experiment that theoretically should not work, yet it does effortlessly.
The meticulous devilmanship, dense composition, and pure electronic instrumentation seamlessly pull you into a raw, volcanic descent.
The Sixth Sin, The Artwork
The artwork stands as a stark visual manifestation of the musical and lyrical themes within. It is a direct glimpse into the ash-choked horizon of the record, capturing the exact point where deep-earth geology meets synthetic artifice.
Cover Illustration: Hand Tinted 1924 Explosion Cloud, courtesy of the National Park Service. Massive plume of smoke from an eruption at Kīlauea, captured by Kenichi Maehara on May 13, 1924.
The Seventh Sin, Disrelish
There is no disrelish to be found within Zenith Beneath the Ashen Clouds. The composition is flawlessly executed, leaving nothing to reject — only an immense, heavy terrain to re-traverse.
The Hymns
01. The Verdant Slumber
02. Echoes of Magma Symphonies
03. The Molten Tide
04. Caldera Shrine
05. Volcanic Zenith Contemplation
06. Rites of the Abyssal Core
07. Lava Rain Dance
08. Crypt of the Ashen Crater
Azbac
Azbac — Digital Synthesisers, Field Recordings