Dies Irae

Evol is a very hard band to listen to. There are lots of different styles in the same album and sometimes even in a same song.
This compilation is no exception. It contains the first two demos, this time on CD, while they were only available on tape before, + two live tracks. Still, don't think the sound was remastered very well.

The live tracks are only for die hard fans of the band, since the sound quality is extremely bad. At the same time, what would you expect from a black metal band of the mid 90s !

So, if you withdraw these songs, there are the first two demos remaining. Why putting them on CD with the same amateur production? Just to make some money for a quite unknown label? I don't know. I don't understand the purpose. Maybe it's just to make the things easier for the fans. Instead of looking for two tapes when they want to listen to the band's two demos in the row, they have everything on one disc. Moreover, CDs are more solid than tapes. Anyway, let's strictly continue with the music.

On the program, there are useless entirely keyboard driven songs with a so-called medieval touch (at least it's what the band desperately tried to create in vain). On most of these songs there are mixed black metal roars and female vocals. While the female vocals rather match the music, it's not the case with the bestial roars. Some other mainly keyboard driven songs also have some distorted guitar in the background, but absolutely nothing interesting. The distorted uninspired riffs are just here to give the listeners the impression that they are listening to black metal, while they are getting lured. The band's name itself already is a problem. In spite of clearly evil lyrics, the music has little to nothing evil in it.

However, in this mixture of forgettable songs, the band managed to create two excellent tracks. Both of them are on the later part of the album. Therefore, they are taken from the second demo. These songs are "The ancient king of ice" and the famous "Witchlord". I can't say that they are technically perfect, but they are much better than the rest of the tracks and for some reason, there is a real alchemy between the voices and the atmospheres created by the keyboard. Even the guitar is good on these two songs. While the guitarist more or less follows the melody of they keyboard (this time with a real medieval touch) on "The ancient king of ice" (still with some variations), the acoustic parts on "Witchlord" are well played and bring something more and definitely unique in Evol's music.

The question now is the following : Do you want to buy an album for only two good songs? I would say it all depends how much you have to pay for it. It's not a surprise that "Witchlord" has been covered by Abysmal Grief. It's one of Evol's best songs.