2001's deceptively named
Quietus was
Evoken's second full album (following 1998's Embrace the Emptiness and 1996's
Shades of Night Descending EP) and it found the group taking measures to tidy up the frayed edges of earlier productions, somewhat, in order to come up with more focused and condensed funeral doom sludge. In every other respect,
Quietus was business as (un)usual for these Garden State manic depressives, with continent-sized offerings like "In Pestilence, Burning," "Withering Indignation," and the preceding LP title track, "Embrace the Emptiness" (all of them eight to twelve minutes in length!), boasting long, creeping riffs interwoven with desolate melodic lines, and capped with the most guttural, low-pitched growls achievable by the human larynx (courtesy of lead "Evoker"
John Paradiso). Not until the moderately galloping third track, "Tending the Dire Hatred," are listeners given something they can really bang their heads to (in tandem with the most prominent synthesizer backdrops yet), and even the synthesized violins and occasional spoken vocals used on "Where Ghosts Fall Silent" and the monolithic title track, respectively, only manage to lift the drapes of sonic oppression ever so slightly. By the time
Quietus begins winding down, via the relatively concise "Atrementous Journey" -- a veritable David amidst the preceding Goliaths at but four minutes of instrumental mourning -- exhausted survivors may feel like they've just endured a full week's worth of sensory bludgeoning, instead of an hour's. But then, that's the twisted attraction of funeral death/doom such as this, and with
Quietus,
Evoken proved they could dominate the genre's peculiarities as well as any band, going on to achieve even more stunning results on their subsequent masterpiece,
Antithesis of Light.