heavy-metal-darkness: Evoken | Mendacium

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Evoken | Mendacium | Profound Lore Records

Release Date: October 17^th, 2025

Format: CD/LP/Digital

Genre: Death/Funeral Doom

Country: United States

Evoken has long stood as one of the most defining names in American funeral doom metal, carrying a reputation for turning despair into slow-moving grandeur. Since the early 90s, the New Jersey band has shaped the genre’s darker edge, fusing the crushing weight of death metal with a suffocating sense of grief. Albums like “Quietus” and “Antithesis Of Light” cemented their legacy as a band that doesn’t just write heavy music, but creates environments of decay and contemplation. “Mendacium,” their seventh full-length, continues that lineage with a more oppressive and cavernous sound, presented via Profound Lore Records.

The album unfolds like a ritual inside a forgotten monastery. There’s an immediate sense of age and confinement, as if the songs were echoing through the stone halls of some abandoned sanctuary. The atmosphere is thick, unhurried, and purposefully suffocating. Evoken works with patience, allowing sorrow to grow until it becomes physical. Every chord hangs like a tolling bell, every growl resounds like a prayer from the void. The tracks’ structure is simple on the surface, but the weight of their layering and the slow harmonic movement make them sound massive and desolate.

Compared to “Hypnagogia,” “Mendacium” steps away from melancholy and turns toward spiritual decay. The sound is rawer, darker, and more ritualistic, less about mourning and more about damnation. The vocals emerge from the depths, distant but commanding, while the guitars move like waves of stone, occasionally breaking into melodic fragments that vanish before they can bring light. There’s a quiet experimentation in the background, some gothic undertones, a few atmospheric passages, that enrich the gloom without softening it.

Conceptually, the album takes place within the fevered mind of a dying Benedictine monk haunted by visions, faith, and something inhuman lurking behind the veil. That premise gives the album a sense of narrative tension, even without the need for lyrical clarity. The pacing, transitions, and soundscapes follow that descent, from the early ritual chants to the final surrender.

“Mendacium” is not the most devastating or elegant work Evoken has made, but it radiates the grim identity that has always defined them. It’s an album meant to be absorbed, an hour-long meditation on decay, faith, and the horror of introspection. The production by Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal ensures that every layer is heavy and suffused with atmosphere, giving the album its catacombic depth.

Evoken don’t aim for urgency here. “Mendacium” is dense, ritualistic, demanding time and immersion. It doesn’t strike immediately but leaves a residue of gloom that lingers long after the final echo fades. For longtime followers of funeral doom’s most devoted craftsmen, it’s a strong return to the abyss, faithful to their art and spirit.

Score: 7.0

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful" – Seneca