Mysterium

From the first piano notes of The Nameless Eidolon, you know what EvenSong is going to bring. Fortunately they do the haunting Gothic metal routine really well. The female vocals aren't just high pitched warbling but actual proper singing with respect paid to timbre, enunciation, and correct key. The male vocals are worthy, if unexceptional, harsh vocals as you'll find throughout the metal world. The keyboards are very dramatic and completely their own instrument, harmonising and switching tempos with the guitars, all the time. Every 30 seconds there's another shift in tone, and the song morphs into another emotional landscape. It's all very satisfying for the listener, especially considering how often this type of music is done really badly.

The listener can expect well-crafted songs, full of dynamicism and soul. The airy, mysterious, Gothic style of metal you've heard at too many metal nightclubs in the 00s, is upgraded on Mysterium, and you will also notice just how much prog influence is present in the guitar solos, and drum-patterns. It's a bit like a sonic mish-mash of Faith No More and Nightwish. The drums are often behind the beat with rim-shots and jazz ride-cymbal patterns. At other times, prog rock beats are more prominent. The bass is nicely audible and always bubbles just under the keyboards, to add some earthiness just when it's needed.

Mysterium isn't really an earthy album though, it's more like a weird fairy-tale soundtrack, or a very musical fever-dream. A lot of the riffs borrow from Yngwie Malmsteen's classical-inspired playing, and overall the musical level is a couple notches higher than you'll get elsewhere in the genre of female fronted Gothic metal, and the title track Mysterium is evidence of this, with excellent drumming and great interplay between keyboards and guitar, and eccentric drumming. The female vocals are really superb here. Actually, EvenSong could have ditched the harsher male vocals altogether; the playing is so filled with verve and panache, you don't need the growling to metal things up a bit, the musical commitment does it by itself.

To the Abyss Unfathomable has a more melodeath feel in places, and also features very interesting uncanny melodies all over the place. EvenSong don't do lazy song-writing; everything is always doing something, nothing is just there to fill out the soundstage. The lyrics are concerned with the arbitrary hypocrisy of the gods, the plight of the human condition, and the mysteries of the cosmos; you know how it goes. Excitingly they are assembled really clearly and concisely, and work as mini-essays on their own, not quite poems, but not just text-blocks either,

What evil conjurer evoked us to this horrid world
to this waste realm of gloom?
What supreme, ravenous and insatiable will
rent us from our empyreal abode?

EvenSong also play the master's game by keeping Mysterium pinned at 6 songs, but adding up to about 40 minutes of music. Other bands would have tried too hard, and filled out proceedings with cover songs, or filler songs, or even stodgy composition. Everything on Mysterium is streamlined. It's definitely a metal album too, despite all the prog touches, and Gothic overtones. If you enjoy anything from Nightwish, to Dream Theater, to Theatre of Tragedy, to Faith No More, EvenSong will tickle your fancy. The only criticisms of Mysterium are that the production is slightly thin, not weak per se, but just very clarified and mid-range oriented. You could also argue the music is pretty involved and slightly weird, which isn't for everyone. Overall though, from The Nameless Eidolon to Passing of the Elder Gods, everything on Mysterium is complex, and interesting, and atmospheric, and mysterious, which all sum up to be exactly what you'd want from an album called Mysterium, in the first place.