EVOKEN — Embrace The Emptiness (review)

EVOKEN — Embrace The Emptiness album cover Album · 1998 · Funeral Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Wilytank
Evoken are another essential funeral doom metal band that I needed to review, but damn! I've listened to their second and third albums before my big FDM epiphany with Funeral's 'Tristesse'. I thought the first, 'Quietus', was quite fine and that the other, 'Anithesis of Light', was pretty phenomenal. After my FDM epiphany, I've given Evoken's debut, 'Embrace the Emptiness' a listen and ended up being immensely impressed.

First, there's an intro track that portrays what can be found on the rest of the album: light sounding guitar played with the regular funeral doom followed by a section of quiet, dark ambient on the second half of the intro. I'm feeling two vibes here. It sounds mournful like most traditional funeral doom, but it also sounds deep and void-like like Esoteric take on the genre. I think Evoken found the sweet spot between the two and made something great out of it.

Then, "Tragedy Eternal" kicks in. To go through all The drumming gets quite quick with the kick drums being given a good exercise, but this isn't entirely uncommon in the funeral doom genre. There are still those slow moments of plodding funeral doom.

Lead guitars exist and do break into solos at least once per song. Production wise, the guitars sound the rawest of all the instruments, but it's barely noticeable when layered with the keyboards and drums which are well produced. The clean sounding soft guitar is one of the key players here and fits in well at any part of the album, be it melancholic pieces like "Tragedy Eternal" or more menacing ones like "Chime the Centuries End", though there is much more of the latter than the former (which I consider a good thing). The keyboards also do their part to augment the atmosphere with the presentation on "Chime the Centuries End" making me feel like I'm staring downward into an abyss. It all feels so dark and empty, hence 'Embrace the Emptiness'.

I feel like Evoken issued forth the modern wave of funeral doom with the cleaner sound. Though they were a little late bringing out their debut full-length in 1998 when Skepticism and Esoteric already belted out two albums each, Evoken's 'Embrace the Emptiness' is still very inspirational. I can see a lot of their style in acts like Ataraxie, Ahab, and others.
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