With their 1st demo, Spanish sextet Evadne promises some darkness and sadness in their doomy gothic metal with a feeling of the yore (something like the first half of 1990s). Shortly said, promise is kept.

Simplistic guitar work (like, no guitar solos) reminds of ye olde English pioneers' methods and similarities do not end here. Violins generated with synthesizer is so totally My Dying Bride. With acoustic guitar, samples, synths and roomy sound the band have added saddened atmosphere quite succesfully, no doubt about that. Highlight of the demo is 'At the Edge of the Cliff'; a well composed epic, multi-parted song. It maintains its tensions well, unlike predictable and way too familiar 'The Autumn of the Withered Roses'. I'm sure I've heard this one before somewhere, but I can't place it. 'Bleak Remembrance' manages to raise in quality stakes again with more epic songwriting. Soundwise this is a bit above average demo quality.

Vocals are typical stuff: male grunts and female singing. Jessie happens to be a very good singer with natural sounding voice, and it is powerful too, when she's unleashed. Male vocals, however, are lame. Dry and powerless, boring grunt, sometimes cut by even worse "Donald Duck in flu" type voice, work badly against atmosphere. Pronunciation isn't good for both sexes, here's an example: "cliff" is twisted to "claif". But the pronunciation is a minor problem when compared to male vocals.

With 'In the Bitterness...', Evadne have stayed inside the borders of the style and actually they have sticked into a small amount of old school influences, which on the other hand could please someone enormously. It's your choice. At least this demo is worthwhile for ones who are looking for this kind of stuff. So, mission accomplished.

Reviewed by Lane
11/19/2005 20:10