Red Ankh

Universe’s heavy diamond band! Heavy diamond, or progressive gabber metal for the layfolk, is at the heart of this independent digital fantasy band. Composition for Red Ankh split away from Shyft’s dance music projects in 2004. Themes are borrowed from black metal, chiptune, dance, death metal, neo-folk, gabber, goth, industrial, power metal, progressive, symphonic metal, synth wave, thrash metal, and trance, often blended and arranged together in the same song. Red Ankh is a bunch of suckers for powerful anthems and choruses, but you will find moments of subtlety in Red Ankh’s works as well, and this is a progressive, boundary-breaking, and tinker-y project at its base. Lyrics typically focus on tales from the Main Sequence and the band’s philosophical journey.

Aside from the loud guitars and drums, synthesizers and older traditional human instruments are key for delivering the signature Red Ankh sound. Synths come naturally to Shyft, as the keyboardist, but piano is typical, and hurdy gurdy, accordion, and dulcimer are known to come out of that thing as well. Stars and Bourac will switch between and multitrack synth guitars and real steel strings regularly. Erizmak’s kit wouldn’t be complete without thundering, overdriven synth and sampled kickdrums, and Jinzin might even swap out the 6-string for a Game Boy chip to switch things up. As an independent, self-taught, home-equipment project, Red Ankh’s recordings and arsenal depend upon what’s available at the time, and outdated productions are revised as time permits.

The first album, THE GIBBERLING, was an unofficial solo release from Shyft, off label, intended to be reworked with Stars. The project files for this album were corrupted beyond recovery, and rebuilding it from scratch by ear was still not a priority in 2023. The pieces were long, dark, repetitive, and instrumental. Then came the period of the synth-heavy instrumental, wholly progressive gabber metal albums: INED-TIF, Master Synth, and 13:17:30. These too were unofficial releases in 2004, but were reworked with Stars in 2009. The next album, This is our New Age, adopted a more natural sound for guitars, despite most guitar tracks still being synthetic, was a tad bit less avant-garde in its composition and arrangement, and was the first to feature a few songs with vocals. Then, in 2005, the tradition of color/style-themed albums began. The Bronze series is symphonic and focuses on a particular bright, medieval atmosphere. The Gray series emphasizes industrial. The Blue series emphasizes chip-tune. Shadow emphasizes black metal and gothic music, and so on. After the rebuilding and releasing of UNIVERSE in 2015, Red Ankh began slow progress with the long-awaited Green double album (focusing on folk metal and cyberpunk), but was mostly inactive from 2016-2022. Then, in 2023, the band spontaneously began three large projects at once: the finishing of the sympho-folk metal infused Red/Black double album (original compositions completed in 2006-2007), a compilation album of favorite Red Ankh songs from albums This Is Our New Age, Bronze I, Bronze II, Blue I, Blue II, Shadow I, and the “O” OST, and a cover album of industrial/synthpop songs from the 90s and early 2000s. Just before 2024, they released their first Classics Compilation that combined the rerecordings and the covers in to one big album.

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