Darksynth is synthwave turned dark and heavy: the same 1980s synthesizers and drum machines, but with distorted bass, a horror-film mood and, often, the weight of metal. It sits at the aggressive end of the scene and is usually instrumental. Nightride FM, a large online radio, gives it its own channel and describes it as "Darksynth / Cyberpunk / Synthmetal".[7] In the Frekvenci archive the darksynth family holds 1,803 listed releases, but most of them sit under an older word, and that is the first thing to understand about it.
Where the dark comes from
Two kinds of source feed it. The first is cinema. Bandcamp Daily's list of unsettling synth records observes that many synth composers end up at horror, having absorbed the scores of John Carpenter and Goblin, and floats a second idea: both the instrument and the genre attract people who feel on the edge of things.[1] Louder's 2017 feature describes the revival as built on 1980s exploitation and science-fiction films, and ties its mood to the "fear, paranoia and alienation" of that decade.[2] The film side has its own page: Synthwave and 1980s film scores: Carpenter, Vangelis and the sound of the screen.
The second source is metal. In a 2022 Metal Hammer interview about Leather Terror, Carpenter Brut said he "thought it would be cool to make a metal album without guitars".[3] The magazine's 2021 profile of Perturbator carried the subtitle "Synthwave is out, electro-goth is in".[4] That is the magazine's framing, but it fits a pull away from sunsets and towards something harsher. Louder's 2020 list of essential synthwave albums includes TERROR 404, from 2012, and says he sounded harder and darker than his contemporaries from the start.[8]
A game helped too. Hotline Miami came out on 23 October 2012, and its soundtrack included Perturbator's "Miami Disco".[6] Fans often say it introduced synthwave to gamers. That is opinion; the record shows only that the track was there.
How it sounds
Compared with ordinary synthwave, darksynth tends to differ in three ways:
- A heavier low end. Bass is distorted and pushed forward.
- Minor-key tension. Where outrun resolves into a sunset, darksynth stays uneasy.
- Borrowed instruments. Bandcamp Daily describes Hexenkraft's The Infernal Schism as screaming guitar, chiptunes and rough synth plug-ins in one place, "retro" and "evil".[1] Carpenter Brut's quote above argues the opposite approach, so there is no rule.
The radio has two doors. The Dark station (94.6 FM) ("heavy, cinematic, a little menacing") is the main one. The Deep station (98.5 FM) has longer tracks without vocals.
What the archive shows
Here the numbers do some work. The darksynth family in our archive has 1,803 releases by 866 artists on 455 labels. Broken down by tag:
| Tag in the family | Releases | Artists | First year | Busiest year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Darkwave | 1,597 | 809 | 2000 | 2020 |
| Horrorsynth | 95 | 41 | 2014 | 2021 |
| The plain darksynth tag | 111 | n/a | n/a | n/a |
So close to nine in ten releases in the family carry the darkwave tag, a different music, and only 111 carry the plain darksynth tag at the top of the tree. That does not make darksynth tiny. Community tags overlap: among the family's releases, 762 carry the user tag "darksynth" at some point and 840 carry "dark wave", and one release often carries both. Tags are opinions, so the honest summary is that the family holds two scenes, and we show both.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 4 |
| 2009 | 4 |
| 2010 | 3 |
| 2011 | 9 |
| 2012 | 14 |
| 2013 | 22 |
| 2014 | 44 |
| 2015 | 78 |
| 2016 | 165 |
| 2017 | 165 |
| 2018 | 222 |
| 2019 | 209 |
| 2020 | 243 |
| 2021 | 198 |
| 2022 | 118 |
| 2023 | 97 |
| 2024 | 98 |
| 2025 | 75 |
The curve is younger than the archive's overall one. It stays in single digits to 2010 and passes 100 in 2016 (165). It peaks at 243 in 2020 and has dropped since, to 98 in 2024. Recent years are still being filled in by the databases we draw on, and 2026 is a part year.
On labels, Werkstatt Recordings leads the family with 37 releases, though it issues other styles too. Cold Transmission Music (29) and Diskonekt (28) are almost entirely dark, with nearly all their listed catalogue in the family. RetroSynth Records has 24 in the family out of 200 listed. 481 releases are self-released.
Country is known for 62% of the family's releases. Of those, the United States leads with 269, followed by France (118), Russia (90) and the United Kingdom (85). Russia's place is easy to miss; Russian synthwave and sovietwave: the scene in data looks at that scene.
The artists with the most listed releases here are not the famous names. Beasuce (Canada) has 45, all self-released and 33 of them in 2018. Starfounder (Russia) has 36, Xetrovoid (the Netherlands) 27 and Occams Laser (the United Kingdom) 20. Prolific acts like these fill a long tail, while Perturbator and Carpenter Brut, with 14 and 19 releases in the whole archive, carry the genre to a wider audience. If you like Perturbator: artists to try next and If you like Carpenter Brut: artists to try next map their neighbours.
Darksynth, darkwave, horrorsynth: telling them apart
Darkwave is the older word. The term grew out of new wave and post-punk in late-1970s Europe, was applied to gloomier synth-led bands in the 1980s, and came back in later waves in the 1990s and 2000s.[5] It often has guitars and sung vocals and has its own labels. The two overlap in databases, less in sound. Darkwave vs darksynth: two dark genres people mix up sets them side by side.
Horrorsynth is the nearer neighbour. It leans harder on horror-film imagery and holds 95 releases from 41 artists, the first listed in 2014. Its biggest label, Diskonekt, has 23 of them. The detail is in What is horrorsynth? Synthwave for the slasher-movie crowd.
Synthmetal is what stations call the blend with metal; Nightride lists it beside darksynth.[7] In our archive it is a mood, not a tag.
Records to start with
Picked to run from the first wave to recent years, one record per artist, across several labels.
- Perturbator · 2012 · Blood Music · LPA 2012 album that the metal press singles out as harsher and darker than its peers.[8]
- Perturbator · 2014 · Blood Music · LPA 2014 album tagged horrorsynth, from the same artist and label.
- Carpenter Brut · 2015 · No Quarter Prod · COMPThree EPs collected in 2015, from the artist who later said he wanted to make a metal album without guitars.
- Dan Terminus · 2014 · Werkstatt Recordings · LPA 2014 album on Werkstatt Recordings, filed as darksynth.
- GosT · 2013 · Werkstatt Recordings · EPA 2013 EP from the artist Louder profiled, on Werkstatt Recordings.
- Occams Laser · 2017 · self-released · LPA 2017 LP of narrative dark synth: Bandcamp Daily describes a cult story told through voiceover.[1]
- Terrortron · 2017 · Sacrificial Records · LPA 2017 horrorsynth LP that Bandcamp Daily calls an imaginary score.[1]
- Hexenkraft · 2017 · self-released · EPThe 2017 EP that mixes synths with screaming guitar.[1]
- Forerunnerx · 2023 · Diskonekt · OTHERA 2023 release on Diskonekt, the label with the most horrorsynth entries.
A listening route
Start on the Dark station (94.6 FM) and let two or three tracks go by; that is the sound the tag points at. Then move to the Deep station (98.5 FM) for the long, vocal-free version. If you find you prefer singers, guitars and a colder mood, you were probably after darkwave, and the Romance station (97.2 FM) sits closer to that.
Two more artists tagged darksynth as well as synthwave have their own guides: If you like Dance With the Dead: artists to try next and If you like Scandroid: artists to try next. For labels, Blood Music issued ten of Perturbator's listed releases. To place darksynth on the whole map, read Synthwave sub-genres explained: a map with real counts, A short history of synthwave, from French blogs to the charts and What is synthwave? A plain guide, with the numbers.
Sources
- Scary synth records (Bandcamp Daily list) · Bandcamp Daily
- Resonant evil: how synthwave is taking over the underground · Dom Lawson, Louder / Metal Hammer, 2 Feb 2017
- Carpenter Brut: 'I thought it would be cool to make a metal album without guitars' · Alec Chillingworth, Louder / Metal Hammer, 30 Jun 2022
- Synthwave is dead: how Perturbator embraced the dark side · Dannii Leivers, Louder / Metal Hammer, 17 Jun 2021
- Darkwave (used as a map to its references) · Wikipedia
- Hotline Miami · Wikipedia
- Nightride FM · Nightride FM, station list read 20 Oct 2026
- 10 essential Synthwave albums · Dom Lawson, Louder / Metal Hammer, 8 Jun 2020