Empusae and Maris Anguis Map Japan’s Supernatural Underworld on Onryōtan

Cryo Chamber has spent years building a catalog of deep, cinematic dark ambient. Lately, the label has edged toward records grounded more explicitly in folklore and place, and the new collaboration between Belgian sound designer Empusae and Tokyo-born, Illinois-based artist Maris Anguis sharpens that focus. Onryōtan translates Japanese supernatural lore into seven tracks of immersive dread, split between solo compositions and three collaborative pieces, without ever tilting into pastiche.

Empusae has long sculpted vast black-ambient voids. Here he brings a restrained, cinematic hand. Maris Anguis works with traditional Japanese instrumentation alongside synths and her own voice, which cuts through the mist in ways that feel less like performance and more like a presence. The opening track “Eien no Yami” (“Eternal Darkness”) sets that tone immediately: a fog-thick soundworld where the gates to the realm of the dead seem to creak open, and Ryo Utasato’s vocals drift through like a summoned spirit.

The solo pieces carve out distinct territory. Maris Anguis’s “Kurozuka,” named for the man-eating ogress Kuromitsu, mixes hushed electronic ambience, percussion, and what sound like stringed instruments to create a space where whispers carry both invitation and warning. Empusae’s “Tename” takes the form of a black ambient drift, a suffocating darkness that curls around the listener, named after a yokai with eyes in its palms. Every turn feels watched. The track fades into silence as if something has just finished feeding.

The collaborative “Ushi no Koku [Mairi]” anchors the album. The title references the hour of the ox, the deepest part of night, when a scorned woman can visit a shrine to drive nails into wood and cause her target searing pain. The piece doesn’t just illustrate that ritual, it makes the thin membrane between worlds tangible. Across Onryōtan, these two artists treat the source material not as decoration but as structural logic. The result is an album that feels tactile, weighted, and unsettlingly alive.