Lash Strikes Flesh in the Brilliantly Foreboding "Mortal Shell" Soundtrack from Atrium Carceri

When it comes to painting vistas of epic scope in a listener’s mind using naught but sound, few compare with the quality and scope of Cryo Chamber, and at the forefront of that roster is Atrium Carceri, a dark ambient project formed by Simon Heath, who, for nearly twenty years, has become the reason we use terms such as “cinematic” in descriptions for the unique, oppressive and compelling soundscapes presented in the music. Atrium Carceri specializes in creating vast worlds and stories, broad in scope, yet leaving enough space within the narrative for the listener to explore and design the fantasy to their mind’s impetus.

Atrium Carceri has contributed the score and soundtrack for the newest action/rpg game, Mortal Shell, and while this is not the first foray into a video game soundtrack for Atrium Carceri (see The Old City OST, Cryo Chamber, 2015), this is certainly a decisive direction, displaying pure mastery of minimalist grandeur through sound evocation. Every sound and cue feel organic, and from the reputation that AC has, every sound and cue was probably created from scratch; I say that not in a cajoling way, but in regards to the methods with which I personally have read and studied about Atrium Carceri - the use of field recordings, natural stabs and percussion, organic resonances merged with delicate balances of reverbs and room tones, all used to convey scope and a depth of field that few can manage, much less maintain over the course of several albums. 

The story of Mortal Shell is an Iliad of bleakness and battle, warfare, and woe, whose core makeup is an obvious and heartfelt love letter to the progenitor of the action/RPG genre, Dark Souls (colloquially referred to as a Soulsborne game). With such a namesake pedigree upon which to measure itself, Mortal Shell presents the player with a dreary, moribund existence of strife and torment, all while battling your way forward at the behest of your dark god.

Lashed to the helm of Atrium Carceri is Simon Heath, a master at sound design and setting a mood with tense drones and atmospheres of introspective, cosmic dread, and the soundtrack alone has catapulted this game to the very top of my wishlist. One slight flourish of a low, almost imperceptible wind, and then the slightest whisper of a choir and the listener is given a surge of existential dread and awestruck wonder; musically, the tracks feel like a natural culmination of previous AC albums like Codex, as well as earlier works such as Metropolis and Cellblock. Distant bells and chimes and the subtle ebbing of haunting choirs paint the mosaic of the macabre despair that permeates this game.

This album is a fresco of foreboding, a divining rod of ill portents that await the player in this bleak game of steel and survival. One of my favorite tracks (so far) is "Armor of Fallen Foes", which literally sounds as if it was designed with groaning metal as the "instruments", the timbre taking on a sliding, Braaam sound - that of grating metal - while following a martial cadence. Many of the tracks on the album have an industrial feel, often compelling the artist to begin a crescendo of speed and tempo, but not Mortal Shell. Slow, methodical, and tenuous, Atrium Carceri stays focused on providing slow, dense atmospheres of wonder and mystery throughout the entire album’s runtime. Tonally, the tunes are almost a tribal Gnosticism put to musical form, with echoes from some cataclysm in the past, rippling through the music of the present Age, all the while you, the listener, are left to plumb the cosmic void of your imagination or the dread locales of the world in which the soundtrack takes place.

The brooding atmosphere alone makes this album compelling, and when combined with a purposefully oblique narrative, Mortal Shell is certain to delight both fans of the musical genre as well as gaming enthusiasts and collectors. The Mortal Shell soundtrack is available in a collector’s 16-page DigiBook hardback and the digital edition on the Cryo Chamber Bandcamp page.

Read more within the Museum of Macabre Media on Monsters, Madness and Magic here: Furnace Brings A Beloved, Gothic Melodeath Sound With A Lovecraftian Edge