What an interesting word “bloviate” is. Dictionaries define it as speaking verbosely and in an annoying way, as if the speaker thinks himself very important but is instead empty of substance. It seems to have originated in the U.S. in the early 1850s as an alteration of the word “blow,” as in the sense of “to boast,” like a blow-hard. It came up then, and still comes up, in reference to politicians.
Even more interesting is the death metal band Evilyn‘s choice of that word as the name of a song on their debut album Mondestrunken (which will be released on August 16th by Transcending Obscurity Records). And there’s another interesting word.
Mondestrunken seems to be a German expression that translates as “moondrunk“. The only previous reported use of it that we’ve found in our research is in the name of a song that opens an innovative musical melodrama (commonly known as Pierrot lunaire) composed by Arnold Schoenberg based on a cycle of poems by Albert Giraud. It premiered in Berlin in 1921.
Well, we can only guess about why Evilyn chose that name for the album and “Bloviate” as the name of the song we’re about to premiere. But it turns out that the music is every bit as atypical as the naming choices.
Guesswork is also all we have as a way of explaining how Evilyn came to exist and how it evolved, because so far we haven’t seen any commentary about how the band’s three current members joined together. Those three, who collaborated on the creation of Mondestrunken, are:
Anthony Lipari from the Michigan-based progressive death metal band Thoren as guitarist and vocalist; Alex Weber from Malignancy and Exist (and a live performer with Obscura) on bass; and Australian drummer Robin Stone (from Norse and Ashen Horde, among many other features of his resume). And we should add that Coma Cluster Void‘s Jeanne Comateuse mixed and mastered the album and was also responsible for creating the fascinating and very colorful cover art.
Maybe you heard Evilyn‘s 2020 debut EP, Inside Shells. At that time Lipari was joined by two other performers. So this is clearly his project, and clearly his decision to recruit new collaborators for the album.
As you’ll discover from listening to “Bloviate“, Transcending Obscurity hit the nail on the head when describing Evilyn‘s new music as “at once monolithic, alien and formidable… simultaneously dissonant, twisted, technical and crushing”.
The massive atonal pounding in the song will flatten your head to the point where you could deliver plates of food on it and use your hands to carry something else. But the perplexing fretwork also leaps and bounds, woozily meanders, stitches like a big sewing machine, undergoes freakish convulsions, and seems to murmur, moan, and wail.
And so Evilyn‘s music proves to be a fascinating union of stark contrasts. In part it’s primitive, brutish, and unforgiving (the vocals are themselves bestially brutish), but it’s also remarkably intricate and elaborate in its layering of guitar and bass maneuvers, and the drumming is just as inventive and unpredictable as what the string-slingers are doing. The prominence of alien dissonance adds to the music’s capacity to rock you back on your heels and spin your head like a top.
Transcending Obscurity has also referred to the album’s music as a labyrinth, with land mines laid along the way, and this song helps explain that metaphor. But as twisting and turning as the music is, you’ll also pick out motifs (especially on further listening) that recur, and thereby strangely get stuck in the head. And so although the song is named “Bloviate“, it’s not nonsense. There is a method to the madness.
T.O. will release on Mondestrunken on 8-panel digipak CD, cassette tape, and digital formats, with lots of related apparel and other merch. They recommend it for fans of Gorguts, Maere, Morbid Angel, Dischordia, Coma Cluster Void, Saevus Finis, and Wicked Innocence.
We’re also including streams of two other previously released songs from the album — “Penance” and “Vacuous“. They’re every bit as moondrunk as the one we’ve just premiered.
PRE-ORDER:
https://evilyndm.bandcamp.com/album/mondestrunken
http://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
http://eu.tometal.com/