Band:	Evilyn
Album:	Mondestrunken
Style:	Avantgarde death metal
Release date:	August 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Dread
02. Omission
03. Limits
04. Bloviate
05. Penance
06. Vacuous
07. Interwoven
08. Forgotten
09. Slithering
10. Eat The Elite

I initially thought the name of the album was something along the lines of "Mondestrukten", which would've been something about destroying the world. Seems like I need to brush on my spelling and my German, because Mondestrunken is closer to "Moondrunk". Still pretty cool. Anyway, here's some dissonant death metal!

Before we dive into the state of dissonant death metal, what I find curious about Mondestrunken is that it's a debut album, but it's not the band's first album. Evilyn as an entity, an international band, has been a thing since 2017, and did actually release an EP, Inside Shells, back in 2020. And the curious thing is that since the release of that EP only one of the band's members remains in the band, guitarist/vocalist Anthony Lipari (also of Thoren fame). Sure, changing a couple of members isn't that big of a deal, but it's still kinda strange to keep a band name that wasn't even really established while only one member remains. Alongside Lipari, completing the lineup are Exist's Alex Weber on bass and drummer Robin Stone, whose resume includes the likes of The Amenta, Ashen Horde, and Convulsing.

It's been nearly three decades since Gorguts released Obscura, and though it took a while for that album's influence to be felt in its seismic waves, it does seem like this kind of avant-garde dissonant death metal has became more and more commonplace, to the point where a new band in the style is at risk of not standing out. Mondestrunken would've certainly made a lot more waves if it came out about a decade earlier, and some genre fatigue does set it back, but I still find that it does things to stand out. There's nothing in terms of wacky genre fusions, instead Evilyn shape the dissonance in a way that balances out the more straight-forward death metal and its avant-garde tendencies.

First off, there's obviously a lot of atonal and angular riffing, part and parcel of a dissodeath act, but also swimming in that sea of riffs are also riffs that do feel more straight-forward, some OSDM-tinged riffs that wouldn't be out of place on a Morbid Angel record if sucked out some of the dissonance, and they're used both sparingly and integrated within the more erratic sound so that they don't feel out of place. Secondly, the dissonance is used in a way that feels less like the dense suffocating layer of heaviness, heavy as Mondestrunken is, but instead takes a more dissorienting nauseating role, with an almost doom-ish tone. The everchanging structures seemingly only keep the growled vocals as the only constant, but there's more than just a semblance of structure, albeit one where off-kilter riffs shift constantly. True to its name, there is something similar to intoxication in the nausea that the music emanates.

The more commonplace state of dissodeath didn't exactly make the genre an easier listen, so Mondestrunken is still quite a challenging listen, but also one that I find intriguing enough to stand out on its own.