EVILYN is a death metal band from international origins; over the years, their members have hailed from America, Canada, and Australia. After releasing the EP “Inside Shells” in 2020, the band has returned four years later with their full-length debut “MONDESTRUNKEN.” The band’s overall style is without a doubt one that stretches the boundaries of death metal. It’s avant-garde, technical, and progressive. The best way I can describe it is “SOUND OF PERSEVERANCE” era DEATH and Atheist. But take those sounds and push the psychosis and depravity up a few dozen notches and you might get an idea of what this album truly is. It’s a complex journey, with so many ideas and details but it never forgets it is a death metal machine. So what does that mean exactly? It means that it beats you to death while it turns your mental facilities to mush. “Mondestrunken” is a special kind of punishment that eviscerates on multiple levels and dimensional planes.

The guitar tone is rooted in old school death metal and the bass absolutely slaps. Together they weave a tapestry that is both focused and yet chaotic. Much could be said of the drumming–it’s truly impressive the way it dances through the album, providing a backbone but just loose enough to accommodate the nature of the music. The vocals are FANTASTIC, utilizing brutal lows and sharp highs. The dissonance that opens up with “Dread” is immediate and palpable but it’s also furious and moments of groove bolstered by the clever drumming constantly pushes the song forward. It doesn’t languish in any one moment, either. The middle section is all about the bass leading the song around the next corner. When it gets there around the 2:30 mark, it’s a blast of extremity that is impossible to ignore. A lot of tech/prog bands focus on speed, especially the ones that are on the death metal side of the genre. “Limits” pulls back on that, offering a slow to mid paced spacey presence. This keeps the song fluid while giving the band plenty of time to still apply more straightforward riffs.

The album isn’t all about distortion; the band is just as effective in using clean passages to get their message across. “Penance,” begins with rapid riffs and freight train speed but around the 1:17 mark, it all goes clean but it’s a psyche trip that is extreme in a different way. The halfway point marks a return to that approach but this time laced with growls to create a world that exists in the abstract and the horrific. I appreciate the length of the album, and the songs themselves. Overall, it is a tight 36 minutes runtime across 10 songs. None of the songs hit the five minute mark and that’s perfectly for this style. I don’t want an hour of this; I want a bombastic burst of insanity that hits hard and leaves but is welcomed back for repeat listens. That’s exactly what is received. The shortest songs, “Interwoven” and “Eat The Elite” are both under three minutes but utilize the time well. “Interwoven,” brings a hard low end with the bass and drums, both threatening to vibrate out of my headphones and throttle me. This one is very riff based, a tunnel vision that zeroes in on brutality.

“Eat The Elite,” ends the album with pure carnage…..that bass is just MASSIVE. The riffs searing and the groove is catchy. This is definitely one of the most uncompromising songs on the album but around 75% of the way through, it opens the floodgates for mind melting notes to rack the brain before settling back down to pure pain and guile. EVILYN’s “Mondestrunken,” is a journey into madness that will appeal to anyone who likes music that steps outside the box but also one that even the most ardent fans of death metal will enjoy.