Dark ambient is a subgenre of industrial music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones. Dark ambient has its roots in the 1970s, with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology. Dark ambient is an unusually diverse genre, related to ambient music and noise, yet generally free from derivatives and connections to other genres or styles.

Dark ambient evolved partially based on several of Brian Eno's early collaborations that had a distinctly dark or discordant edge, notably "An Index of Metals" (from Evening Star, 1975), a collaboration with Robert Fripp that incorporated harsh guitar feedback, the ambient pieces on the second half of David Bowie's Low (1977) and "Heroes", Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics (1980), a collaboration with Jon Hassell, and particularly the fourth installment of his ambient series, On Land (1982), which had many deeply spatial elements, often utilising field recordings to foreboding effect. An important early precursor of the genre was Tangerine Dream's early double-album Zeit, which was unlike most of their subsequent albums in abandoning any notion of rhythm or definable melody in favour of "darkly" sinuous, occasionally disturbing sonics.