Band:	Evadne
Album:	The Shortest Way
Style:	Melodic death metal, Gothic doom metal
Release date:	April 2012

01. No Place For Hope
02. Dreams In Monochrome
03. This Complete Solitude
04. One Last Dress For One Last Journey
05. All I Will Leave Behind
06. The Wanderer
07. Further Away The Light
08. Gloomy Garden

If there were a "starter album" for extreme doom, not necessarily the best, but perhaps the most accessible, Evadne's latest might be on a short list.

The Shortest Way is perhaps most amusingly named given the band were talking about their upcoming release at the 2010 installment of Dutch Doom Days.
A scant two years later, we have Evadne's The Shortest Way.

The sound is pretty much impeccable. When you have Dan Swanö twiddling the knobs, it all but guarantees a certain professional level of sound quality. The whole dynamic package of the album - ranging from clean tones and vox with symphonic/keyboard swathed passages to doomish onslaught of growls, distortion and power chords sounds absolutely wonderful.

The band are indeed talented and have created a really good follow-up to The 13th Condition. They do display a grasp of both the tenets of doom (slow, crush, growl, distort, punish the listener) as well as the importance of dynamic song construction. Don't sit on any one thing too long. Switch things up every once in a while. Buck the tempo. Toss in clean elements. Incorporate female clean vocals to counter the growls.

The strength of this album is also perhaps its key drawback in preventing a higher rating.

The sound is so swell that it almost detracts from the music. Doom is based on evoking negative emotions, with the more extreme the doom, the more extreme the mood and presentation. The Mary Poppins "a spoonful of sugar helps the doom go down" approach perhaps acts to mute the impact. It doesn't go quite as far as While Heaven Wept's "mocha frappucino" girlie drink coffee, but "one lump plus two" makes it more accessible to those outside the Marcel Kool Doom Kids Klub ? and perhaps too saccharine for some inside.

But that's nitpicking, really. While it won't auto-kill all plant life in 10 meters upon hitting play like other extreme dewm acts, it perhaps is likely to lull the listener with sugar-sweetness and thus infects them with doomabetes and possibly heart disease as well.

That's a good thing, amirite?

It's a good listen, and especially so for those looking for a gateway drug to more punishing and harsh doom.