Mondestrunken struck me first with its unusual artwork in combination with the death metal tag. It should not have been a surprise to find that the beautiful image is the work of Jeanne Comateuse, who was responsible for last year’s show-stopping artwork for Nightmarer‘s Deformity Adrift. With further digging, it became apparent that Comateuse is also an audio engineer and that she has handled mixing, mastering and more on Evilyn‘s debut album. My interest then turned academic: how would a painter handle sound? Pretty damn well, it turns out. Mondestunken‘s most defining feature is Alex Weber‘s (Exist, Wait) bass, a dynamic center-point which leads the songs on a drunken stroll, calling to mind the style of Aseitas or perhaps even the jazzy all out war of Sarmat‘s debut album with its technical dissonance. Opening song “Dread” showcases this well enough with the bass growling in the background while sharing space with alarming, higher pitched notes and ripping guitars. The dissonance is never allowed to become painful but the whole of the sound is soft enough to fit in well with all of the sudden tempo shifts without losing its bite, leaving equal room and attention to a full sounding snare and cymbal crashes. Mondestrunken is a pleasant album to listen to for how heavy it is, in other words.
If you find me spending an unusual amount of time describing the production it is simply because it is Mondestrunken‘s best aspect. The songs themselves are another matter. At their best, songs like “Vacuous” and “Eat the Elite” come at you with a good death metal attack, rounding out the great rumbling bass in the background. Other small details stick out like the anxiously emotional solo at the end of “Omission” and the dissonant chord progression of “Slithering”. But for longer stretches of time it feels like Evilyn are treading water, drunkenly stumbling down random streets and unable to find their way home. Tracks like “Omission”, “Limits” and “Forgotten” rely too much on the bass groove to make much of an impression and build up an album that is hard to grasp and remember after several spins. Despite coming in at a respectable 36 minute runtime I find this album to be a chore to listen through all the way. There are plenty of creative ideas, but they feel like throwaway moments that don’t touch the main idea of the songs enough to have a lasting impact. When first snagging the promo of this album, I enjoyed having its sound in the background, but with subsequent and more focused spins it began to sound empty. If you’re looking for something current with masterful grasp of groove in this style you should listen to the new Replicant album instead. Or if you’re in it for the experimental nature, Aseitas‘ new album has you covered for the melodically progressive. And Sarmat‘s debut album from last year is a go-to for memorable avant-garde rhythms in death metal. Mondestrunken has an excellent coat of paint but it fails to move me much beyond that.
