#evoken

[stylistic-nightmare]

Evoken - Where Ghosts Fall Silent

[somnolentdesolation]

Evoken - "Astray in Eternal Night" from A Caress of the Void (2007)

"Once again, reliving the final fragments of a bygone dream"

[triste-guillotine]

EVOKEN "Mendacium" LP 2025

1. Matins 2. Lauds 3. Prime 4. Terce 5. Sext 6. None 7. Vesper 8. Compline

"In cavern shadows (deep) where your mind will dwell. There is a fear that grips, a whisper to tell. If there is naught beyond life's knell? Myth is heaven's gate, a non fiery cell.

Will hideous angels soar or inner demons dwell? The unknown lurking, I seek thee through a daunting spell. Summoned hopes and fears rebel.

Life's own journey is an appeasement of dogmatic will. Submit to your heaven, within ourselves, And banish known fears and give rise of no heaven or hell."

"Mendacium tells the tale of a 14th century elder Benedictine monk with malady from illness preventing him from leaving his room within the monastery he dwells within. His faith and service to God can never be satiated. Slowly declining in health and sleepless from continuous pain, the monk encounters a hideous entity emerging through a tear in reality. The story questions, is the torment of this monk by each passing hour being inflicted by this entity or is it all within his own mind ?"

Mendacium | EVOKEN | Evoken

[dreamsofconsciousnessmetal]

2025: A Year For Serpents [Weekly Mixtape 203]

Ophiolatry | Pandemia | Escarnium | Defigurement | Intercourse | Noisepicker | Evoken | Abhorrent Expanse | Wretched Blessing | Imperial Triumphant | Yellow Eyes

Direct Download [hold + "Save As"]

Music On This Mixtape:

Ophiolatry: "Apophis" taken from the album "Serpent’s Verdict"

[Watch my interview with Ophiolatry here.]

Pandemia: "The Pallor Of Detest" taken from the album "Darkened Devotion"

[Watch my interview with Pandemia here.]

Escarnium: "Inexorable Entropy" taken from the album "Inexorable Entropy"

[Watch my interview with Escarnium here.]

Defigurement: "Godtopsy" taken from the album "Endbryo"

Intercourse: "Zoloft And Blow"/"Unsuccessfully Attempting To Parse Nightmare From Reality" taken from the album "How I Fell In Love With The Void"

[Watch my interview with Intercourse here.]

Noisepicker: "The Earth Will Swallow The Sun" taken from the album "The Earth Will Swallow The Sun"

[Watch my interview with Noisepicker here.]

Evoken: "Lauds" taken from the album "Mendacium"

[Listen to my interview with Evoken here.]

Abhorrent Expanse: "Praise for Chaos" taken from the album "Enter The Misanthropocene"

[Watch my interview with Abhorrent Expanse here.]

Wretched Blessing: "Ẓulm" taken from the single "Ẓulm"

Imperial Triumphant: "Industry of Misery" taken from the album "Goldstar"

[Watch my interview with Imperial Triumphant here.]

Yellow Eyes: "iii. The Entrance"/"Confusion Gate" taken from the album "Confusion Gate"

[Watch my interview with Yellow Eyes here.]

[radiophd]

evoken -- none

[morklagt]

[vinylspinning]

Thorr's Hammer: Dommedagsnatt EP (1998)

It's one thing to name your death/doom band Thorr's Hammer and sing/croak lyrics in Norwegian, but quite another when a 17-year-old Norwegian exchange student is doing it after bumping into a pair of depressed stoners in Seattle, Washington.

So goes the tale of Dommedagsnatt (Norwegian for "Doomsday Night"), which paired Runhild Gammelsaeter (the aforementioned Norwegian waif, a.k.a. Ozma) with future Sunn O))) and Southern Lord label masterminds Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley.

Recorded in 1995 and released in '98 as SUNN01, the three-track Dommedagsnatt EP was the product of a brief, six-week "career" during which Thorr's Hammer (augmented by bassist James Hale and drummer Jamie Sykes) performed all of two shows.

But they had the presence of mind to visit a nearby studio long enough to record three examples of their crawling, crushing, mythologically-inspired death/doom, topped by Runhild's haunting wails and unbelievable, inhuman roars.

Seriously, you may have to watch some vintage live footage for yourself to fully accept this incongruous reality as fact.

First cut "Norge" is basically an ode to Norway, extolling its frozen nights and midnight sun, virgin forests and deep mines, its sailors and adventurers, while "Troll" pits legendary beasts against the Viking gods (including Thor, of course) in an epic battle over Midgard.

And the title track recounts the Norse apocalypse itself -- Ragnarok -- and draws yet again from ancient texts to describe that final battle between gods and giants, as mankind helplessly awaits to learn who will be their masters after this immutable "doomsday night".

Southern Lord's first CD pressings added a live bonus cut entitled "Mellom Galgene," which translates to English as "Between the Gallows," and places Anderson and O'Malley's colossal, corrosive guitar tones somewhere between Electric Wizard and their most successful subsequent endeavor, drone lords Sunn O))).

These bands' names alone should stoke raging fires in the souls of extreme metal enthusiasts (and strike fear in poseurs' 'nads), and indicate the overwhelming power and enduring cult surrounding Thorr's Hammer and their small but seminal musical canon.

It ain't for everyone, but ... Happy Halloween!

p.s. -- Today, when she isn't being called into very sporadic tour duty with Thorr's Hammer, Runhild works in the field of biology, in which she holds a Ph.D. in cell physiology.

p.p.s. -- Some of these words were edited from my All-Music Guide Thorr's Hammer biography and Dommedagsnatt review.

More Death/Doom & Funeral Doom (or Close Enough): Ahab’s The Giant, Cathedral’s The Ethereal Mirror, Colosseum’s Chapter 1: Delirium, Confessor’s Condemned, dISEMBOWELMENT’s Transcendence into the Peripheral, Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics …, Evoken’s Antithesis of Light, Mammoth Storm’s Fornjot, Morgion’s Among Majestic Ruin, Paradise Lost's Gothic, Rippikoulu’s Musta Seremonia, Samothrace’s Life’s Trade, Serpentine Path’s Serpentine Path, Shape of Despair’s Angels of Distress, Skepticism’s  Stormcrowfleet, Solothus’ Realm of Ash and Blood, Spectral Voice’s Eroded Corridors of Unbeing, Swallow the Sun’s Songs from the North I, II & III, Symptom’s Caverns of Katabasis Thergothon’s Stream from the Heavens, Triptykon’s  Eparistera Daimones, Winter’s Into Darkness.

[albumarchives]

Evoken | Embrace the Emptiness (1998)