Evoken: Atra Mors

I have listened to this album over and over again today, just taking in the sound.  It is an extremely intense album and definitely takes some time to fully absorb.  That is what I have been doing today.  This is my first experience with Evoken, and what an experience it is.  This is an incredibly dense and challenging album, but once absorbed it is definitely worth it.

Evoken is about as bleak and desolate as music gets.  Fitting for funeral doom of course.  But the somber tone that Evoken has mastered is incredibly dark even for the genre.  The songs are all long epics with an atmosphere of desolation and pain.  But it is the clean vocals and clean riffs that really capture the listener's attention.  Many funeral doom bands utilize a wall of sound, oppressive and intense, but Evoken are able to convey the same misery and hopelessness with even their cleaner moments, soulful wailing and acoustic melodies.

It is extremely difficult to talk about this album.  I am not going to waste space talking about why you should check this out.  It is an all-encompassing experience.  It is truly something that one has to pay full attention to and interpret for themselves.  This is an incredible album, quite possibly one of the best albums in the funeral doom genre.  A modern-day masterpiece.