Re-Release big time once again. Displeased Records managed to release one of those records, that have left quite some impression back in the 90s for various reasons and that still leave this impression nowadays. In this case of "Shades Of Night Descending" it´s some great stuff for fans of (Funeral) Doom. To make this re-release more attractive, maybe even for those, who can call the 90s original their own, some more stuff has been added: the artwork has been completely redone and demos from 1996 and 1997 can also be found on this CD. This leads to some long 70 minutes playing time.
Evoken haven been founded back in 1992 under the name Funereus, which was changed to Asmodeus just one year later. After searching for new bandmembers, who were willing to dedicate time and effort to this band, it was decided, that a new name had to be found: Evoken.
With this line-up they finally recorded the first demo in 1994 , the now re-released "Shades Of Night Descending". Back then this album was called rather "special" or even "strange", since everything was about Thrash and Co, Death Metal was just reaching it´s peak, etc. Nevertheless or maybe because of that, Evoken left a mark and gathered a growing fanbase. In a time, were most bands were striving for more and more speed, Evoken were striking another path into the completely opposite direction, creating slow, slower and slowest Doom Metal.
Now, that (maybe) winter is approaching, this dark, depressing material of Funeral Doom should be the perfect "soundtrack" for rainy, dark winterdays. It´s probably best to just sit down in a dark or dimmly lit room, put on the CD and get embraced by musical darkness that´s dragging you down into the depths of Doom. A sinister intro is paving the way for things to come in the following "In Graven Image", which almost has some kind of Black Metal touch to it, but with damn slow riffs and deep, deep growls. "The Towers Of Frozen Dusk" starts off a bit fast, but goes back to the doomy slowness again.
With song number 5 the journey through the demo from 1996 starts. The first thing, that is pretty obvious, is the more melodic approach, along with clean vocals - those however change to growling again, accompanied by distorted, dirty, heavy, heavy riffs. The following "Embrace The Emptyness" is th longest song with approximately 13 minutes. After a pretty melodic outro, there are still two songs left, namely those form the 1997 demo. "Among The Whispering Spirit" creates quite a dark and captivating atmosphere together with spoken parts, growling - simply this kind of feeling again, that just drags you deeper and deeper into the world of Funeral Doom. One last outro and the journey is over - now you´re either back to reality or you´ll find yourself drowned deep in thoughts in your dark room.
While quite a huge part of Metal is made for jumping around, getting rid of aggression or something like this, this stuff is just made for sitting down and just taking some time to get totally, I mean totally like in "completely" into the musik. So you´d better not even touch this record, if you´re not willing to invest some time and effort to get into it. The production might sound a bit rough, but keep in mind that this was the sound of the 90s. Funeral Doom fans will enjoy this fine piece of music!
Cornelia Wickel
Read comments:
Warning: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /var/customers/webs/stalker/www.stalker.cd/inc/kommentar.inc.php on line 8
0
Write comments
