Studňa

Two years after their first full length album, the legendary, after all these years of activity, duo from Slovakia called Evil, returns with their second full length work. So their new album is called “Studňa”, it was released in the April of 2015 into limited number of copies (500) and it contains five compositions of overall duration of thirty-five minutes. All those of you who have already listened to one of the band’s previous works and more precisely its previous album, you should know about what are you going to come across into this album. Well played, harsh, European Black Metal. But now the band has moved a step forward, by making its depressive references even more intensive and dark.

So, the first thing that the listener will notice into the new creations of Evil is the divided compositions into their violent, chaotic, Scandinavian style and into the slow, dark and depressive side of them. Every track is a long journey into feelings and images. The riffs, into the fast parts, are typical tremolo, long riffs quite dark and violent, while other times they put out a warlike character and other times a dark, merciless and violent one. On the other hand, the band when it slows its speed, it present us its depressive side of it, by mixing the depressing character that we come across into its previous works with a romantic touch. So they achieve to put out a quite interesting sound. The tracks are quite long (over nine minutes). This is not something weird though as the band is trying to offer to us with each one of its compositions a complete experience with feelings and images that it can fulfill its purpose separately from the rest of the tracks. They succeed this thing to quite a high level. The structures of the tracks seemed to me a little repetitive, namely they are following the same pattern almost always, that is fast part, passage, slow part, passage, and again fast part. That pattern into so long tracks is quite tedious. However, the changes of sentiments and images, help the compositions a lot.

Regarding the sound and the performance of the instruments, the band has improved a lot in those sections too. Firstly, the production is clean and quite dark putting out a sound that absolutely fits to the romantic style of the band. The mixture is flawless as it maintains the balance among the instruments, it allows to the listener to listen to the smallest detail from their lines and at the same time, the compositions don’t lose their massive and solid character. The guitars in here too, are the instruments that create the sentiments and the images, while with their flawless performance they offer to the listener all those things that the compositions have to offer. The bass is heavy and you can listen to its lines throughout the entire album. It has interesting lines and it fills the composition correctly. The drums are following the same high level, the scenery that has been set from the rest of the instrument, adding power where it is needed. The vocals are harsh Black Metal vocals with that characteristic melancholy into the way that they deliver the lyrics. Finally, the lyrics are written in Slovakian but inside the inlay of the cd, the listener can find along with the Slovakian lyrics also their English translations. Evil deal with dreams, nightmares, the inner demons of their heroes.

Summing up, I believe that “Studňa” is a step forward for Evil that they show that they prefer to make slow but steady steps with each new release. Surely there are some problems into the album, with the most obvious one to be the repetitive pattern of the compositions, but these problems do not influence the overall value of the album. Their fans, you surely have to buy it. The rest of you, it worth to listen to it and to get to know the band, especially those of you who haven’t done it yet.