Synthwave hit another groundbreaking milestone with Lakeshore Records after only a few weeks into 2019 with Fangoria Presents: Hollydoom.

Fangoria is one of the world’s most acclaimed horror movie news outlets and they are celebrating with this compilation of songs old and exclusively original to celebrate the relaunching of the print magazine. The team at Fangoria hand picked these artists to feature on this album. Veteran and pioneer John Carpenter gets a certified nod whilst musicians like Gunship, Mega Drive and Ogre push to new territory. It’s a firm collection of songs to represent the past, present and the future of the horror genre. The song opens up with Power Glove, of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon fame, who introduces the album with the irresistibly eerie yet funky Adult Themes. Gunship provide their signature songwriting talents alongside Corin Hardy to send shivers through a terrifying atmosphere and heavy bass with Cthulhu. Carpenter Brut is a master of creating soundtracks with the punchy early classic Mandarin’s Claws. The Narrow Caves by Binary Reptile rightly deserves to be on this album after being to amazing ending to 2017 release Crawl Into The Narrow Caves. The legendary John Carpenter has the wonderfully orchestrated Abyss from his debut standalone album Lost Themes featured.

Wojciech Golzewski offers a beautifully retro styled horror bop with The Black Dahlia. Initiation by Pentagram Home offers a tasty metal riff to give Hollydoom that extra flavour of a different genre. Razzle Dazzle from Umberto provides the chills with some strong 80’s John Carpenter vibes from films like Halloween. Orge wakes up the latter part of the album with the frantic and upbeat Fugue. And to finish off the soundtrack with the popular Mega Drive with the fantastic outro song with Darker Skies. The album has a strange feeling to it, but I can promise you it’s in a good way. It feels like this soundtrack deserves a motion picture and to tell you the truth with enough imagination you can create that yourself. Every song can trigger horror scenes in your mind and that’s the unsung genius behind this soundtrack. The songs blend in together surprisingly well; even though Pentagram Home’s Initiation may be different it still combines well. The musicians on this album are more than worthy to take on the task at hand. Fangoria Presents: Hollydoom offers underrated classics and intensely chilling original songs to fully establish itself as a sensational horror soudntrack.

– Matthew Clewley