EVOKEN
Mendacium

Known as one of the founding fathers of the American death/funeral doom metal scene, New Jersey’s EVOKEN have been a long-standing pillar over the band’s 25 year pillage. Their new full-length album “Hypnagogia” is the band’s sixth LP, their first in six years since their landmark “Atra Mors” album, and is a towering monolith that develops and redefines the band’s sound that will only strengthen their position within the death/doom metal hierarchy where EVOKEN have always reigned.

“Hypnagogia” is an expression of doom metal artistry where the listener will bear witness how EVOKEN can create a new and even more daring expression with a monument that will be recognized as a landmark. This tends to happen regardless with every EVOKEN release, but “Hypnagogia” sees the band expand their musical dynamics even more through the meticulous care and discrimination of the band’s song writing process, “Hypnagogia” being a listening experience through a multitude of varying yet flourishing emotions. 

The most prominent and significant American death/funeral doom emissaries EVOKEN succeed their 2018 landmark Hypnagogia album with their seventh full-length opus Mendacium set for release on Oct 17. A work that will reveal itself as one of the darkest and most oppressive EVOKEN albums among their unparalleled repertoire.

Where 2018’s Hypnagogia would see the band capture and focus on a more melancholic, tangible, and even more of an accessible sonic design, Mendacium takes that acute shift back to the monumental dirge-like dread and woeful catacombic and disharmonious heaviness reminiscent of the band’s Quietus and Antitheses of Light masterworks. All while still encapsulating the tectonic-shifting nature of their Caress of the Void and Atra Mors releases while venturing more through classic gothic audial textures and even treading a little down experimental mire as well, reminiscing an aura seeping from such luminary artists as Dead Can Dance, Monumentum, and Disembowelment.

To signal this shift in sound harking back to this previous era, the band would recall the services of producer Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal who worked with EVOKEN on their Antithesis of Light and Quietus albums respectively. The result being Mendacium capturing a sepulchral heaviness saturated in ambience with even more of an emphasis on deathlike dread and anguish; an ambience reflecting the depths and catacombs of an ancient cathedral or monastery, ultimately defining Mendacium as EVOKEN’s most powerful sounding album to date.