Hammerheart Records have announced the reissue of two remastered Evoken classics, Shades Of Night Descending (1994) and Embrace The Emptiness (1998), which will see the light of day on 16th January, 2026.
Pre-orders are now available here: https://evoken.lnk.to/embracetheemptiness
Doom metal, perhaps the most varied of all the metal genres, has been crossing over with plenty of other genres, and surprisingly often, the crossbreeding has been fertile. While the “funeral” brand of doom metal sounds like something that lacks the genetics to successfully breed with other metal genres, its nihilism works surpringly well when blended with slowed down death metal. Among the masters of that gruesome fusion are Evoken from the United States.
Shades of Night Descending is the first recording by Evoken, released in 1994, and for a debut recording, it is a surprisingly mature creation. The later works of Evoken have a thicker wall of sound and plenty of production tricks in them, but the deviations from the basic formula introduced here have been essentially more polishing that actual rethinking of the format.
Perhaps the music is of the same funeral death/doom metal variety as found on the later albums, all the way to the excellent Antithesis of Light (2005) and A Caress of the Void (2007), but the unrefined production on Shades of Night Descending, with its barren character and almost heavy-handedly echoing soundscape, brings out the nihilism of funeral doom more effectively than the more professional production jobs of the later albums.
The atmosphere on this recording is bleaker, even less forgiving, and perhaps even more desperate and repulsive in a positive sense than what can be found on A Caress of the Void. Even the considerably melodic guitar part in ‘Towers of Frozen Dusk’ and other sweeter spots on the demo have a taste of ash and feel of pumice in them; Evoken walks on a musical lava field here, and manages to paint the true meaning of funeral doom in slow death metal colours on the canvas.
With their debut album Embrace The Emptiness (1998), 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.
Put on Embrace the Emptiness, shade your windows, turn off the light, lie down in bed and let yourself get overwhelmed with emotions. Drift away in your mind and just let the feelings of solitude hit you. An utterly dark album that every fan of funeral doom/death metal should own.
Track-list:
1. Intro
2. In Graven Image
3. Shades of Night Descending
4. Towers of Frozen Dusk
5. Into the Autumn Shade
6. The Hills of Arctic Stillness (Demo 1996)*
7. Embrace the Emptines (Demo 1996)*
8. Outro (Demo 1996)*
9. Among the Whispering Spirits (Demo 1997)*
10. Outro (Demo 1997)*
* CD bonustracks
Track-list:
1. Intro
2. Tragedy Eternal
3. Chime the Centuries’ End
4. Lost Kingdom of Darkness
5. Ascend into the Maelstrom
6. To Sleep Eternally
7. Curse the Sunrise
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