Dungeon Synth: Photographs by Peter Beste

An exhibition and photo book launch in Los Angeles featuring the second ever live performance by Grimdor from Arizona.

Hat & Beard Press is proud to announce Dungeon Synth, the exhibition and photography book by Peter Beste.

Over the course of three years, Beste documented dungeon synth’s global underground—a fiercely independent musical subculture rooted in solitude, fantasy, and self-made worlds. Emerging from the one-man black metal projects of the 1990s, dungeon synth has evolved into a distinct and enduring form. Largely overlooked and rarely photographed, this international network operates outside mainstream visibility, sustained through small-run cassette releases, handmade artwork, and tightly held channels of exchange.

With Dungeon Synth, Beste presents the first extensive photographic account of this elusive subculture. Moving between intimate portraits and stark, atmospheric landscapes, the images trace the spaces in which this music is created: bedrooms, forests, ruins, and imagined realms made tangible through solitude and devotion. The result expands beyond music, revealing a broader practice of world-building, grounded in isolation and imagination.

Edited by Johan Kugelberg, the book situates dungeon synth within a lineage of underground cultural production—where anonymity, self-sufficiency, and resistance to scale are not limitations, but defining principles. This volume marks the fifth collaboration between Beste and Kugelberg.