Exclusive Album Premiere: Evilyn’s Mondestrunken
Not very far from the madding crowd.
On Friday, August 16, the international death metal trio Evilyn will release its debut full-length Mondestrunken on Transcending Obscurity Records. Today, just a few days shy of the release date, we’re thrilled to bring you an exclusive album premiere so that you may, to the best of your abilities, orient yourself to the stumbling disorientation therein contained. Good luck!
Featuring the talents of guitarist/vocalist Anthony Lipari (Thoren), bassist Alex Weber (Malignancy), and drummer Robin Stone (Ashen Horde, a bunch of other shit ‘cause that’s how drummers do), Evilyn plays a mangled and cutting-edge brand of dissonant, technical death metal that twists, crushes, confounds, pulverizes, mystifies, and “impales upon contact.” It has the indecipherable edges and structure of a most devilishly and ingenuously designed labyrinth all the while maintaining a warm, organic sound, as if “obelisks of impermeable concrete slabs [tore] through the earth’s crust” in some sort of ghastly, mocking “pattern that can only be deciphered after multiple listens.” I’m still deciphering, cocking my ears and squinting my eyes to see if I can keep hold of any stichic composition lying underneath, something to hold it all together. It’s there, I know, but it is forever fleeting, just only ever slightly out of sight and earshot.
If you’ve ever gone any substantial amount of time without drinking caffeine, and then find yourself once again imbibing that nasty little drug with some regularity, you’ll notice how much of a physiological if not psychotropic effect it has. Some days, those heady glasses of jasmine green tea will blossom in your brain with a potent mix of euphoria and bewilderment. You are high beams cutting through thick fog, a blazing lighthouse exploding through the hazy blackness of the seaside. You are, in that Tolstoian way, intoxicated on tealeaves, drunk on a stimulant. You might even describe yourself as mondestrunken—moondrunk—a crepuscular inebriate fumbling around in the pummeling light of day. Like the ethereal figure on the cover of Mondestrunken, you are sipping from an over-stimulating lunar elixir, and you are floating above the placidity of it all, cocooned in your insobriety.
This is not unlike the experience of listening to Evilyn, drawing as they do from the legendary Gorguts while sitting alongside skronky, incomprehensible contemporaries Maere, Dischordia, and Coma Cluster Void. (Jeanne Comateuse, guitarist of the latter, notably provided the artwork for Mondestrunken.) From the opening quaffs of the aptly titled “Dread” through standout tracks such as “Bloviate,” “Vacuous,” and “Forgotten” to the nightmarish closer “Eat the Rich,” you find yourself simultaneously asea and alee, adrift and firmly emplaced, swirling upwards and standing unwaveringly. Double-bass patterns rip through atonal fits of riffing, with Weber’s bass sliding up and down impenetrable scales while Lipari follows suite without following suite. At merciful times, the band will lock into a blessed groove or any number of pit-ready breakdowns, some of which will remind listeners oddly enough of 2000s metalcore and hardcore, their seemingly awkward fit making all the more sense in the broader composition of the album. It all works, even when it very much feels like it shouldn’t.
About the record, the band has this to say:
We’re very proud to finally reveal Mondestrunken in its entirety. This album is the culmination of years of intense work, and we are excited to hear what the world makes of our creation!
Intensity is the operative word here, as the album is simply relentless in its drive to keep you off-kilter. And yet. And yet! It is a deeply satisfying feeling, like drinking heartily from a dripping moon, and the deliriously delightful effect will have you “coming back for more in an attempt to demystify this phenomenon.”
Enjoy this exclusive premiere and make sure to buy the album and corresponding merch come Friday!
Mondestrunken is out August 16
on Transcending Obscurity Records.
You probably already have it preordered,
because you know what’s good for you.
Go snag it and some sick merch.
Just look at that artwork!
