The most prominent and significant US death/funeral doom emissaries, Evoken, succeed their 2018 landmark album Hypnagogia with their seventh full-length opus, Mendacium. Set for release on 17 October via Profound Lore Records, the new work promises to be one of the darkest and most oppressive albums in the band's unparalleled repertoire.

To offer a first glimpse into the record's sonic landscape, Evoken has unleashed the single and album opener, "Matins", commenting: "'Matins' is a peek into a reality. 'Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful' - Seneca".

Where Evoken's latest album, Hypnagogia, would see the band capture and focus on a more melancholic, tangible, and even more accessible sonic design, Mendacium takes that acute shift back to the monumental dirge-like dread and woeful catacombic and disharmonious heaviness reminiscent of the band's Quietus and Antithesis Of Light masterworks. All while still encapsulating the tectonic-shifting nature of its Caress Of The Void and Atra Mors releases, while venturing more through classic gothic audio textures and even treading a little into experimental mire, reminiscing of an aura seeping from such luminary artists as Dead Can Dance, Monumentum, and Disembowelment.

To signal this shift in sound, harking back to this previous era, the band would recall the services of producer Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal, who worked with Evoken on its Antithesis Of Light and Quietus albums, respectively. The result is Mendacium capturing a sepulchral heaviness saturated in ambience with even more of an emphasis on deathlike dread and anguish; an ambience reflecting the depths and catacombs of an ancient cathedral or monastery, ultimately defining Mendacium as Evoken's most powerful sounding album to date.

Thematically, Mendacium bestows an intriguing concept and story. It tells the tale of a 14th-century elderly Benedictine monk with a malady from illness preventing him from leaving his room within the monastery where he dwells. His faith and service to God can never be satiated. Slowly declining in health and sleepless from continuous pain, the monk encounters a hideous entity emerging through a tear in reality. The story questions whether the torment of this monk by each passing hour is inflicted by this entity or is it all within his mind? Link