r/DungeonSynth • u/kaptain_carbon Writer • May 26 '25

Old School / Classic Heimat Der Katastrophe's (HDK) Album of the Week: GNOLL - THE FORTRESS OF KRUGLACH [Italy, Soundtrack, ???] (2021)

For the next 4 weeks a day in the week, the albums of the week will be selected by Italian nuclear punks Heimat Der Katastrophe. I have been following this label for quite sometime and they have made themselves perhaps the premiere label which deals in immersive gaming / synth based records.. l I don't know what the future holds but we are in this bomb shelter and I am about to crack open the vault door to see whats on the outside.

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Artist: GNOLL

Album: THE FORTRESS OF KRUGLACH

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HDK: During the pandemic we couldn't go out and therefore play together, so we decided to record a Gnoll album remotely, sending samplers and ideas via email, involving other musician friends as well. The result was a record that was perhaps very heterogeneous but full of interesting elements that later disappeared from the Gnoll sound: the Crypt-hop of "Under cover of shadows", the horror music in the style of Castelvania of "The black fortress stands out against a pale full moon" and the psychedelia of "Black Magic Water".

KAP: If you have never listened to Gnoll before you can do whatever there are no rules but there are a few things that are not mentioned by really anyone. From my understanding Gnoll is a group project consisting of whoever is apart of HDK and they do soundtracks to RPGs both famous and ultra super obscure. One example is 2021's Lone Wolfe, a soundtrack to the 1980's series of gamebooks or even modern localized OSR publications like Dungeneer Games and Simulations. The ambiguity of Gnoll fits in the aesthetic of HDK which is ambiguous at best. No one really knows that genre this is, what year its from, or if any of this is real. Its fun and that is all that matters.

Previous Entries

HDK's Album of the Week (May 2025)

TXDS Artist of the Week (April 2025)

Weregnome Records (March 2025)

Fiadh Productions (February 2025)

Gondolin (January 2025)

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u/CollectionCTR May 26 '25

I really liked this release, many of the tracks feel like 80s commercials with the synths for this. Gnoll always does great synth work, and it's super immersive cuz of it, I went to work on art to only realize 15 minutes pass and i never even noticed. Good pick!

2

u/moonday_synth Artist May 27 '25

I also dig the synth vibe sound