Before we dive into today's focus, here's the weekly reminder that if you're looking for even more sick bands to hear, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
I'm extremely excited to help newcomers Evilyn with a premiere of their debut release, Inside Shells. The EP officially comes out this Friday, August 21st. As usual, you can read on below for more about the music, or, skip to the music stream below which is what matters most.
Although Evilyn will undoubtedly be a new name to almost everyone, the band's line-up is chock full of musicians and projects a lot of you will likely already know. On vocals and guitar is Thoren guitarist Anthony Lipari, joined by Human Beansauce bassist Jim Hildebrandt, and drummer Lee Fisher of Fawn Limbs, ex-Psyopus, and Commit Suicide fame. With arrangement contributions, epic cover art, and mixing and mastering all done by Coma Cluster Void genius Jeanne Strieder.
I asked the band for some information about Inside Shells and they told me that "Evilyn got its start in 2017 as a collaboration between Jeanne Artemis Strieder of Coma Cluster Void and Anthony Lipari of Thoren. The goal was to create an old school style death metal record with more dissonance than you usually hear. While writing it took on a shape of its own, dark and haunting.
Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, Jeanne had to take a step back to focus on other musical endeavors. Jeanne still had a massive impact on the record, by having a hand in arranging, mixing, album artwork, and filling in the rest of the line up with masters like Lee Fisher (Fawn Limbs, Alphanumeric, elinguis, ex-Psyopus) and Jim Hildebrandt (Human Beansauce).
The end result is a monstrous five-song EP that we are proud to present. Enjoy the filth."
I think the group's statement above combined with the sort of forward-thinking, technical, and dark music the musicians on this release are already known for should give you a good idea of what Inside Shells is all about. At just under 20 minutes, this may seem to be a bite-sized offering on the surface but that's hardly the case given the ever-shifting nature and incredible complexity of all five songs on here.
I guess you could compare this to the artistic heights only a few other dissonant black/death acts in the tech-death sphere have reached, but, no one out there sounds just like Evilyn does which is the best part. To elaborate a little bit more, Inside Shells is an incredibly unnerving and chaotic work of art with a unique compositional approach that deserves multiple full-focus listens through to even begin to understand it.
I'd urge you to check out our early stream of Inside Shells that is embedded below. You can pre-order the EP through the Evilyn Bandcamp page. This is going to be one of my utmost favorites for the year and I'm sure a lot of you who like dissonant tech-death will feel the same way.
