Rarely do you come across an album that so perfectly traverses the line between brutality and beauty in the way that Evoke Thy Lords do with their latest opus "Lifestories". The Siberian quintet, of Alexey Koslov (bass/vocals), Sergey Vagin (guitar), Vasiliy Yuzhanin (guitar), Yaroslav Kaigorodov (drums) and Irina Mirzaeva (flute), have with their latest album managed to create something that almost defies the usual labels and tags we use to describe musical genres and constructed a sound that although sitting within the territory of doom is not defined by that term.
As "Regressed" peels from the speakers on a wave of low,slow stonerized heavy riffage, layered over a pulverising bedrock of pounding rhythm, it might seem that the opening paragraph of this review had given the listener a bum steer and that this was just another ten-a-penny stoner doom band experimenting with elements of psych and space to fill out there sound, well you couldn't be more wrong. Around gnarly refrains of dank dark psychedelic doom, replete with swirling solo's, low, low menacing vocals and earth shaking rhythmic grooves, comes the sweet, almost saccharine sound of a flute, it's breathy tones bringing a whole new dimension to the relentless heaviness surrounding it.
Mirzaeva's flute majestically weaving in and out of the molten doom grooves on songs like "Life Is A Trick" and the epic "Heavy Weather" is the weapon of mass destruction around which Evoke The Lords build their monolithic grooves of molten metallic doom, it could almost be argued that it is their trump card, their "raison d'etre", those gently blown tones, ringing sweetly above the dark murky doom grooves beneath them, bringing a sweetness to the sour and giving the band an edge that, combined with the psych drenched guitar colouring, tumultuous rhythms and bear like vocal tones, creates a sound that is wholly unique and wonderfully spine-tingling.
Check it out .....
© 2017 Frazer Jones
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