Entry to the Express Yourself 2025 Contest

If you know me, Jef Whitehead is my biggest inspiration when it comes to creating music, so I decided to make a sort of 'Lurker of Chalice inspired blackened ambient sort of thing'. I originally wanted to do some extreme black metal similar to his Ep 'The Blind Wound', but I feel like this was a more accurate reflection of my mind.

Basically if you wanna know how I did the sounds, I'll give a breakdown here.

The main melody in the first half is done on my Gibson Sonex 180, which is then ran through a Line 6 POD X3, which then goes onto a Tascam Portastudio Mk414. The drums in the first half are a Simmon Titan 50 getting ran through a Lexicon MX200, which then goes onto the Tascam. Some of the synths are just VSTs, except for a string and choir sound which is on my Yamaha Keyboard. The sound for the melody on the second half was recorded on an Ibanez 7 string guitar. I don't know how I made that sound with it, but I love it so much I have it on my computer constantly, even making some drones out of it. Once I have everything on the Tascam, I run the cassette to record the audio back onto my computer where it is then mixed and eq'd. It's quite a tedious process but I think the end result is great.