Origin: Serbia
Formed: c. 2020
Location: Serbia
Genre: Depressive / PostâBlack Metal, “Funeral Trap”
Status: Active
Label: Independent
Themes: Isolation, melancholy, digital decay, surreal horror, introspection
Tvnalad is a Serbian solo project that fuses depressive and postâblack metal with trap and electronic elements, a hybrid the creator selfâdescribes as “funeral trap.” Emerging around 2020, Tvnalad quickly built a dense, highly personal discography, moving fluidly between harsh black metal textures, reverbâdrenched atmospheres, 808âdriven beats, and loâfi electronic sound design. The project’s music often feels like a transmission from the digital voidâintimate, distorted, and emotionally raw, yet conceptually playful and experimental.
The early EP Vortigese Black Metal (2020) introduced Tvnalad’s idiosyncratic approach through a HalfâLifeâinspired concept, blending black metal, cybergrind, and EDM with inâgame Vortigaunt voice files used to tell a fragmented narrative. This playful, loreâdriven experiment already hinted at the project’s tendency to merge internet culture, gaming references, and extreme metal aesthetics into something uniquely its own. Subsequent singles and EPs like Litter, Blue Hell, and Hoodie expanded the palette, leaning further into atmospheric, reverbâheavy soundscapes and emotionally charged, minimalist arrangements.
With OST for a Horror Game That Doesn’t Exist (2021), Tvnalad fully embraced a cinematic, conceptual direction, crafting a pseudoâsoundtrack that evokes the tension, dread, and melancholy of a psychological horror game that lives only in imagination. The record blends postâblack metal riffing, ambient passages, and trapâinflected rhythms, blurring the line between score, album, and narrative experiment. This tendency to write “imaginary soundtracks” and liminal music continued to shape the project’s identity.
Freezing by Myself (2022) pushed the depressive and postâblack elements to the forefront, with tracks built around cold, echoing guitars, distant screams, and heavy lowâend, often described as black metal filtered through bedroomâproducer aesthetics. EPs like Letting Go and Interim the same year deepened the emotional focus on isolation, anxiety, and selfâreflection, while maintaining the project’s characteristic blend of harshness and fragility.
From 2023 onward, Tvnalad’s output became even more expansive. Fullâlengths such as Make Me New, Clouds to Shield the Shame, and Adrift Me Wherever (2023â2024) explored themes of transformation, shame, drifting identity, and emotional numbness, often framed through hazy, dreamlike production. The music oscillates between crushing, distorted walls of sound and delicate, almost shoegazeâlike passages, with trap beats and electronic textures acting as a modern, urban counterpoint to the traditional black metal core.
By 2025, with Might as Well Follow the Powerlines, Tvnalad had established itself as a prolific, boundaryâpushing presence in the online undergroundâa project that treats black metal not as a fixed genre, but as a mood to be stretched, glitched, and reassembled. The result is a body of work that feels deeply contemporary: rooted in depressive black metal, but shaped by internet culture, DIY production, and a willingness to experiment with form, format, and identity.
Current
EPs and Singles
Fullâlengths