The revised cover art to Evoken's Shades Of Night Descending is one of my favorites within the realm of funeral doom. With a title light that, it would be simple enough to adorn this collection of early Ep and demo recordings from the seminal doom band in some nocturnal imagery, but instead the band opted for Robert Hoyem's epic scenes of towering buildings in the throes of being blasted by the dust of time, an image that perfectly captures Evoken's poetic visions of a mindless, devouring universe found on these recordings. This newer version of the Ep came out a few years ago on Displeased as an expanded version that included the bands demo tape recordings from the late 90s, and has finally been released in a vinyl edition though Kreation in a full-color gatefold package.

With a long intro track of minimal black ambience that opens the record, Shades Of Night descends. First released on Cd back in 1994 on the French label Funerus Productions, this debut five-song album might come as a shock to Evoken fans who only know the band's later work; with their heart-stoppingly slow tempos, it can easy to forget that Evoken is and has always been a death metal band, evidenced in the blasting brutality that introduces "In Graven Image". After this furious onslaught, though, Evoken get right down to it as they slip into their sorrowful glacial creep, shifting between morose synths and stark, magisterial acoustic strum of their softer passages, and the tectonic, crushing death-doom laced with depth-charge double-bass drumming and John Paradiso's awesomely ghastly vocals. The songs on this Ep hold up really well, showing that this band had already had a solid grasp of their powerful sound pretty much from the start, and the riffs are immense. There's some more blasting death metal ferocity scattered through the album (with the title track beng one of the album's more scathing numbers), tempered with some of the most mournful slowcore guitar melodies ever.

The second record features the tracks off of Evokens 1996 and 1997 demo cassettes, and as you'd expect, these recordings are slightly more raw and unrefined, though they still pack a heluva punch. There's more use of choral synth sounds with these recordings, adding to the vague gothic feel of the desolate, moaning vocals and sweeping choirs, sounding almost like something off of a Goblin soundtrack before it gives way to the blasting, barbaric death metal of "The Hills Of Arctic Stillness", a surprisingly fast paced assault of guttural down-tuned heaviness. Then there's "Embrace The Emptiness", where Paradiso affects a weird Rozz Williams-esque moan that he trades off with the bottomless death-growls, while the band surges from extreme slow motion doom into lurching passages of sludgy, cavernous death metal.

A classic of ethereal, nihilistic death-doom that comes highly recommended to fans of Thergothon, Mournful Congregation, Disembowelment, Esoteric and Skepticism. On black vinyl, limited to four hundred copies.