Embrace The Emptiness

EVOKEN (Author) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD
• ASIN: B001BBTLK2
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #488,461 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

America's most infamous doom metal band, here featured on their first full-length album. Massive, utterly megalithic epic symphonies of doom/death in the grand tradition of Disembowelment and Thergothon. Colossal, shuddering guitars collide with thundering rhythms and evocatively haunting melodies to draw you into an abyss that belongs to this band alone...the result is music that is extremely dark and torturously depressing. This is the Solitude Productions reissue.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Soundtrack to a suicide, January 14, 2010

By 

Justin Gaines (Northern Virginia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Embrace The Emptiness (Audio CD)

(in my best infomercial voice) Are you unsatisfied with the state of modern doom metal? Does Candlemass seem too upbeat and My Dying Bride leave you thinking about sunshine and happy kittens? Do you want to kill yourself, but just can't find the music to make that happen? Well, look no further!

You get the idea. Evoken is the heaviest, doomiest, most somber and downright depressing doom metal band I've ever encountered. 2001's Quietus is the band's most acclaimed release, but their 1998 debut Embrace the Emptiness is the album I put on when I want to hear some soul-crushingly bleak funereal doom. It's relentlessly heavy, moves at the pace of a lumbering mammoth (the average song length is 10 minutes, but this band makes each one feel like a gloriously tortured eternity), and has so much dark, depressing atmosphere that it can literally drain the sunlight out of the day (OK, maybe not that last one). Even more amazing is that Evoken is an American band. Between Daylight Dies, Novembers Doom and Evoken we have something of a doom metal uprising.

Evoken is not for casual doom fans looking for Sabbath-inspired groove. You listen to an album like Embrace the Emptiness when you want something incredibly slow, heavy and depressing. If that's your cup of hemlock, then you'll do well to give this album a try. Bring razorblades.