This is a massive slab of funeral doom and with extras runs at a whopping 79 minutes, every bit of the disc crammed with slow soul destroying misery. Recent albums and last years epic split with Beneath The Frozen Soil made a real impact so it was very nice to get this timeless reissue and be able to dip back into the New Jersey groups past. ‘Quietus’ is the bands second album from 2001 and the follow up from debut ‘Embrace The Emptiness’ in 1998 an album that had already gained Evoken great recognition as a very serious prospect in one of the slowest sub-genres in the metal world.
This is really ghostly stuff from the beginning. ‘In Pestilence’ has that sorrowful feeling, totally bereft of life with its low elongated growls from singer John Paradiso and the haunting keyboards from the sinisterly entitled Numinas. There is a very large feel of My Dying Bride about this due to what sounds like strings weeping away in the background. Also some of the gloomy sparser passages sound as though they were later to be taken on board by Ahab; Evoken have that drowned demeanour that oozes through their debut occasionally floating through their sound too. I am also sometimes reminded of the vocals from the excellent Monumentum album ‘In Absenti Christi’ when Paradiso cleanly opines through the crepuscular musical mire. It’s safe to say if this hasn’t got to you by the end of the first song the album is not for you. The songs are not short in the slightest and there is plenty to get beneath as it unravels in a painfully slow fashion. Having said this there is a bit of a surprise when ‘Where Ghosts Fall Silent’ rattles into mid pace and the vocals pick up into a rasping roar along with it. It’s all a bit Esoteric in a way but don’t worry if the faster part has you breaking into a sweat, slowness is quickly reinstalled. A gorgeous patch of maudlin violin defines the title track and again gets those all too unavoidable Bride comparisons to the fore and the title track of the last album ‘Embrace The Emptiness’ which was not actually a track on it finally sees the dark of night. They may have kept people waiting several years for it but they are not rushing things and it’s an all encompassing and hypnotic morass of misery all 13 minutes of it.
If not already beaten into submission the extras are interesting. Firstly we have the simply entitled and self explanatory ‘Instrumental 2004.’ This is a heavily atmospheric tomb like soundtrack of horror with some nice Gothic sounding keyboard undertones and brooding slow drum and bass parts shuddering through it. Finally we get a rehearsal track from when the band were known as Funereus in 1992 and although unsurprisingly rough around the edges one can decipher the sound of ‘Ascension Of The Infernal Sephiroth’ as a precursor to Evoken. A simple closing statement is that if you missed this first time round and love your funeral doom, it’s well worth picking up now.
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