Drifting Cathedral of the Outer Dark - Out now
- Simonkolle.com
- Aug 25
- 4 min read
For years, fragments of music lingered with me like derelict ships on the edge of memory — sketches, forgotten sessions, transmissions that never found a home. Only recently did I realize they belonged together, orbiting the same uncharted system. That system became Drifting Cathedral of the Outer Dark.
The album draws its lifeblood from the collision between gothic ritual and industrial sci-fi horror. Imagine the voidborne dread of Warhammer 40k and Space Hulk, the haunted corridors of Alien: Isolation and Dead Space, the existential echoes of Event Horizon, Revelation Space, and At the Mountains of Madness. Add the neon shadows of Blade Runner, the doomed faith of Sunshine, and the creeping paranoia of Pandorum and Pitch Black.
This is music written for forgotten transmissions, derelict ships, and sanctums that should never have been unearthed.
Below is the classified incident log — each track documented as a mission report.
Drifting Cathedral of the Outer Dark — Classified Imperial Archive
Clearance: Magenta Level — Ordo Xenos Eyes Only
Author: Salvage Division 3, Outer Dark
Status: MISSION TERMINATED – ALL HANDS LOST
Designation “Drifting Cathedral of the Outer Dark” assigned after auspex contact with a colossal voidbornestructure of unknown origin, cathedral-hulled and adrift beyond mapped systems. Incident logs compiled below record sequential operations linked to the object and associated phenomena.
1. Cold Steel Heresy
Intercepted data-slates from Penance Class VII reveal her hull was defiled with alien bio-alloys. Salvage crew describes a constant, pounding resonance within — like the heartbeat of a dying god. The deeper they went, the more the ship seemed to chant. The beat intensified until the final transmission cut mid-word, swallowed by silence.
2. Catacomb Orbit
Station “Amon’s Gate” drifts in orbit around a lightless corpse-world. Its atmosphere is heavy with a deep, distant pulse — alarms faint beneath the industrial hum, growing sharper with every cycle. Final scans show the signal pattern becoming part of the station’s structure, as though the architecture itself had learned to breathe.
3. Skull Reliquary
The fortress-ship appeared almost sacred at first — a slow, looming cathedral of bone drifting in the void. Midway through approach, whispered vox fragments bled into the comms, describing events that had not yet happened. The whispers persisted long after retreat order was given.
4. Wraith-Class Adrift
Destroyer Ossuary Blade reappears after 128 years lost. Initial scans show constant industrial clatter echoing through her hull, but halfway into the search the sound faded to an oppressive hush. In that silence, faint, arrhythmic pulses emerged — like the dying remnants of an ancient beacon, trying to remember its own purpose.
5. Engrams of Perdition
Recovered data-cores hold distorted voices begging for release, layered over a cold, grinding rhythm. Halfway through analysis, the recordings shifted: organ staccatos, martial drums, and ghostly choirs rising like a ceremony mid-execution. Static cut the link before the rite could finish.
6. Dead Crew Transmission
Transmission from Saint Gaul arrived decades late — an unending mechanical pulse overlaid with hollow percussion like water dripping in steel corridors. Then, without warning, the recording erupted into full assault: braams, strings, and hammering percussion, as if the dead themselves had marched to battle.
7. Xenos Sanctum
Moon Kharis-Beta’s subterranean shrine responded violently to intrusion. Auspex recorded booming impacts like the opening blows of a siege. Male choir chants accompanied each shock, rising until the final minutes faded into airless stillness — a silence that felt deliberate.
8. Hollow God Protocol
A suspended AI reliquary discovered in orbit over Kharis-Beta emits encoded prayer-chants referencing “The Hollow God.” Transmission intervals grow shorter the longer the object is observed. No one who entered the reliquary chamber has returned to the extraction shuttle.
9. Covenant of Ash and Bone
Transport Litany of Saint Erath boarded in sequence with the Hollow God find. The same rhythmic violence filled her halls, layered with organ harmonics. In the great hall, skeletal warriors knelt in formation. They were fused to the deck, still locked in perfect posture, as if awaiting orders centuries overdue.
10. Sacrament of the Unseen
Derelict Blessed Mercy housed a ritual in progress — male chants punctuated by the precise staccato of unseen machinery. Combat broke out during observation. The fighting ended as quickly as it began, and the scene fell into sacred quiet, the remaining echoes minor and mournful.
11. Warpstone Baptism
Initiates immersed in warp-reactive fluid aboard Blessed Mercy emerged altered — their bodies rigid, movements mechanical. Each step they took carried the weight of a pounding industrial march. The rite ended in violence, but the rhythm of it endured, echoing through the ship’s bulkheads long after all movement ceased.
12. Cathedral of Flesh and Steel
Final entry. Pieta Magnus found bound to a vast, breathing organism in the depths of the Outer Dark. Drums rang out like mechanical whips, punctuated by the low wail of hollow choirs. In its heart, an almost nostalgic synth melody drifted above the machinery — as if the ship remembered what it once was. The pulse slowed… and then returned to the deep, alarmed rhythm first heard at Amon’s Gate, closing the loop.
Several of these transmissions are paired with stark visual accompaniments — fragments closer to dark art experiments than traditional “music videos.” They can be found on Spotify with the album.
Drifting Cathedral of the Outer Dark is a sonic archive of dread, ritual, and the unknowable.
Enter the archive: (click on link) Spotify
Over and out
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