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Evoken and Beneath the Frozen Soil Split CD: How Slow Can You Go?

Posted in Reviews on February 24th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

Some bands you just know are going to be unrelenting, and that’s certainly the case with long-running New Jersey mega-doomers Evoken. Their last outing saw them reissue their first demo in the form of Shades of Night Descending on Displeased Records, and now they follow that with four new tracks on a split with Swedish outfit Beneath the Frozen Soil on the I Hate imprint that also released their excellent 2007 full-length, A Caress of the Void. Beneath the Frozen Soil were also last heard from in terms of new material in ’07, when they released a split with Long Island, NY, sludgers Negative Reaction. Maybe they just have something for the East Coast, but either way, the pairing with Evoken makes more sense sonically, as Beneath the Frozen Soil are closer to them in sound and overall feel. What that means as regards listening is that the split is consistent in terms of flow, and if you’ve ever heard anything from either of these two bands, you already know the extremely oppressive nature of their output.

Evoken are positively volatile. Their six-piece lineup (which, near as I can tell, sometimes includes founding guitarist Nick Orlando and sometimes doesn’t) is brutally heavy and agonizingly slow, topped with the unearthly growls of guitarist John Paradiso, who only veers from the guttural to embark on the occasional echoed whisper (see the closing movement of “Omniscient”) or dramatic spoken part (“The Pleistocene Epoch”). If all of their albums weren’t over an hour long, I’d be tempted to call Evoken’s four-track contribution to the Beneath the Frozen Soil split full-length at over 42 minutes; in any case, they’re certainly not lacking in conveyance of aural hopelessness. Drummer/founder Vince Verkay makes the most of his nearly 20 years of experience in the band, easily taking on the task of grounding the 13-minute “The Pleistocene Epoch” – which would confound many – and knowing when to step back and give the guitars room, as on “Vestigial Fears.” Keyboardist Don Zaros provides some respite from the crushing sounds, but between the guitars (Chris Molinari makes three), Verkay’s morose pacing and the added thickness of Dave Wagner’s pace, Evoken are near-lethal in their miserable cohesion. They finish cold (of course) on “Vestigial Fears” and close their portion with “Into the Primal Shrine,” – their only cut under 10 minutes at 7:21 – which is instrumental but for a few non-verbal growls from Paradiso spread across the earlier moments.

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