About Gloom Archives

My relationship with metal began in '97, in my last years of middle school, when I saw Pentagram’s “Anatolia” video. Then, in my first year of high school prep, I was eating breakfast in the kitchen before dawn, about to leave for school, when I stumbled onto Pantera’s “I’m Broken” video on Sky TV, a local channel in İzmir. I breathed that groove straight into my lungs. Korn, Theatre of Tragedy, Amorphis and Lake of Tears followed. Meanwhile I was watching Rock Market on TRT 2, Hangar 18 on Ege TV and Güven Erkin Erkal’s shows, and reading the late Çağlan Tekil’s magazine Non Serviam. That culture shaped me back then, and my taste started to branch out and take form in those days.

Music has never left my life since. Over the years I’ve mixed in pop, electronic, folk and a little Turkish arabesque, which both broadened my palate and gave me breaks from metal. It clears the head, damn it. Still, I never seriously tried to write about music. Apart from chats with friends and short entries on Ekşi Sözlük, I wrote nothing. For years I read sites like pasifagresif.com and metalperver.com and admired and aspired to their writers’ way with words. Gloom Archives is that aspiration finally in my own hands. I have no musician’s background here and no ready-made critical voice. I’m learning to write about music on this site, by writing.

I’ve always enjoyed sharing news about concerts, albums and singles on Ekşi Sözlük. I want to keep doing that here.

What I ask of readers is to subscribe, comment and send me recommendations. I expect nothing else. Even if nobody reads it, this will turn into an archive for me over time. But if you do read it, that would be nice.