Mare Erythraeum
Mare Erythraeum is a Hungarian solo project (credited only to 'Z') that began in 2009 as disharmonic, industrial-tinged black metal before drifting into pure dark ambient/drone. Its sole full-length, Ophitae (2018, NGC Prod), collects three side-long instrumental pieces actually recorded back in 2010 and reissued nearly a decade later as '49 minutes of ethereal, floating space dark ambient about the order of the serpent.' The project is currently on hold.
SCORE PROFILE
Accent numbers counted towards the index. Hover an axis — or hold it on a phone — for what it means.
WHY THOSE SCORES
- Black 4 — Metal Archives lists the early-era genre as 'Black Metal/Avant-garde'; the NGC Prod Bandcamp release also tags Ophitae 'black metal' despite its ambient reissue framing (ngcprod.bandcamp.com/album/mare-erythraeum-ophitae-drone).
- Doom 5 — NGC Prod's Bandcamp page tags Ophitae 'doom metal, dsbm, funeral doom' alongside 'experimental' and 'dark ambient' (ngcprod.bandcamp.com/album/mare-erythraeum-ophitae-drone).
- Drone 7 — Bandcamp tags 'drone' explicitly on both the artist's own page (mareerythraeum.bandcamp.com) and the NGC Prod release; three tracks of 15-17 minutes each are built from sustained tones with minimal riff movement.
- Ambient 7 — Label copy describes Ophitae as '49 minutes of ethereal, floating space dark ambient about the order of the serpent' (ngcprod.bandcamp.com); the artist's own Bandcamp page tags the release 'ambient, drone, noise, space.'
MEMBERS
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FURTHER LISTENING
Nearest score profiles in the atlas.
- UnaffiliatedEI 14SghorAmbientDroneBlack
Sghor is a solo Polish dark-ambient/black-metal project that began recording in 2004 under the name "Allen" before rebranding as Sghor in 2006 and shifting toward longer-form ambient composition. Across a large, steadily-released Bandcamp catalog (Depressive Black Ambient, Never Ending Dysphoria, Le Grand Mystère, the multi-part Lux Dei series, Ahrimanic Resignation, and more), the project favors long, hypnotic, drone-like tracks — often 4 to 16 minutes — that foreground funereal, occult-tinged atmosphere over riffing, with black metal, doom, and funeral-doom genre tags layered onto a predominantly dark-ambient core.
- UnaffiliatedEI 13UlveblodDroneAmbientBlack
Ulveblod is the solo black metal project of Vitriol, formerly guitarist of Dutch black metal band Nihill, launched after the death of Nihill co-founder/vocalist Michiel Eikenaar. The debut full-length 'Omnia Mors Aequat' (Fantoom/Consouling Sounds, April 2020) trades conventional song structure for extended, corrosive drones: reverb-drenched shrieks and 'demonic, sizzling guitars' sit on a single idea for minutes at a stretch (one closing track runs 21 minutes) until, per one review, 'static morphs into beautiful pulses.' The result sits at the abrasive, noise-soaked edge of black metal, with doom-paced riffs breaking through the wall of distortion.
- Blackgaze / avant-blackEI 15Flock of CrowsDroneAmbientDoom
Solo instrumental drone/doom/dark-ambient project by Tim Roberts (Savannah, GA). The substantial release The Prophet Killed (2013) is a concept album about a Biblical prophet, built from eight very long-form tracks (1:37 to 16:47, ~70 min) of sustained tones, slow doom-weight passages and dark-ambient atmosphere per the artist's own genre tagging (Ambient, Dark Ambient, Doom, Drone Metal, Experimental).
- UnaffiliatedEI 11MoroghorDroneBlackDoom
Moroghor was the solo studio vehicle of Massachusetts musician David Lanciani (aka Dimaension X), active 2007-2010 and built around a fictitious three-person lineup of invented characters (Ndethatl, Ygorathla, Zatholal). The 2009 debut '...and Space as Chaos' billed itself as 'Psychedelic Xperimental Black Metal From Beyond,' while its same-year companion 'Darkness...' pivoted to minimal drone/doom the artist himself pitched as sitting alongside Sunn O))), Nortt, and Nadja. Lanciani has continued working similar minimal blackened-drone territory under other names since the project went on hold.
- UnaffiliatedEI 13The Crawling ChaosDroneDoomAmbient
The Crawling Chaos is a Moscow noise/sludge act formed in 2013 ('filth & stench since 2013'), blending doom, black metal and drone into an abrasive, atmosphere-heavy sound thickened by saxophone and noise/synth layers. They've released a self-titled full-length (2015), Гильотины поют о любви (2016), the EP Стерилизация преданных слуг, and the 2024 split Организованное безумие (Organized Madness) with fellow atlas act Neon Scaffold.
- UnaffiliatedEI 12AstruAmbientDoomBlack
Astru is the solo Hungarian black metal vehicle of Mazarine, credited on Bandcamp for "all that sounds," active and prolifically releasing since the early 2010s. La Pionnier Aveugle (NGC Prod, Aug. 12, 2022) is tagged industrial black metal, dark ambient, and doom metal, described by the label as the project's "most dramatic and emotional" album, built on "melancholy, brooding, cogitation, longing, and tears" rather than aggression. Void (2019) leans into raw black metal and harsh noise, while the 2017 split with fellow NGC Prod act Nagaarum, ...a mizantrópia és elidegenedés újabb értelmezései..., is billed as "funeral metal industrial." Across a large catalog (16+ Bandcamp releases), Astru consistently pairs lo-fi black metal with dark-ambient, funeral-doom, and industrial textures rather than a single fixed sound.
- UnaffiliatedEI 11Ice Bound MajestyAmbientDoomDrone
Ice Bound Majesty is a one-man atmospheric black metal project from Sheffield, England, run entirely by Bleek (all instruments, vocals). Releases like the 2007 'A Tomb to Erect' EP and 2016's 'SHI.IM.TI' EP appear on the Sheffield tape label Frequency Thirteen Recordings (self-billed as 'true sheffield black psychedelia'), with Bandcamp tagging the music as experimental, ambient, doom metal and psychedelic rather than straight black metal.
- Blackgaze / avant-blackEI 23LocrianDroneAmbientBlack
Locrian are an American experimental trio formed in late 2005 in Chicago by André Foisy and Terence Hannum, with drummer Steven Hess joining permanently in 2010. AllMusic characterizes their sound as an eclectic mixture of black metal, electronics, drone and noise rock, shot through with ambient and industrial textures and dystopic, apocalyptic imagery. In 2012 they made the collaborative album Bless Them That Curse You with Mamiffer, released on Profound Lore alongside Sige and Utech.
- UnaffiliatedEI 18Ghostmass (大鬼眾)DroneAmbientDoom
Ghostmass (大鬼眾) is a Beijing improvisation collective formed in 2021 from a shared passion for drone, doom, and extreme metal, filtered through harsh noise and free improvisation. Reviewer Michael Scharf (Outside Noise) describes their 2024 album 'Ghost Meditation' as evolving from chaotic noise toward a more structured, doom-metal-inspired sound, with anguished throat-singing-style vocals over grating feedback and power electronics. The lineup draws members from Beijing noise-rock scene acts Carsick Cars and Soviet Pop.
- UnaffiliatedEI 19Haiku FuneralDroneAmbientDoom
Haiku Funeral is a ritualistic industrial/black-metal-adjacent project born in a Marseille studio on Halloween 2008, built around Bulgarian multi-instrumentalist Dimitar Dimitrov (electronics, keyboards, vocals) and American bassist/vocalist William Kopecky, with Finnish drummer David Lillkvist also credited on record. Their sound is a hallucinogenic blend of occult drone, droning doom, and cinematic/ritual ambient, colored by theremin, e-bow, spring-drum, children's harp, and sitar - one reviewer singled out the sitar-and-tribal-percussion 'Cherni Shamani' as evoking cyber-shamanic trance. Six albums deep (most recently Drown Their Moons in Blood, 2021, via Aesthetic Death), they occupy a genuinely fringe niche between black metal atmosphere and psychedelic ritual ambient.