Evoken
Biography
Evoken is an American funeral doom metal and death doom metal band from Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Their lengthy compositions combine slow, heavy guitar riffs and deep growled vocals with keyboards, melodic passages and occasional shifts into faster tempos.
The band began in April 1992 as Funereus, founded by guitarist Nick Orlando and bassist Rob Robichaud. They briefly used the name Asmodeus in 1993 before becoming Evoken in 1994, taking their name from the song “Evoken” on Thergothon's demo Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Sothoth.
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Their first recording under the Evoken name, Shades of Night Descending, appeared in 1994. The debut full-length Embrace the Emptiness followed in 1998 through Elegy Records. They subsequently released Quietus (2001) and Antithesis of Light (2005) through Avantgarde Music, before moving to I Hate Records for A Caress of the Void (2007).
Evoken began working with Profound Lore Records on Atra Mors (2012). Their next album, Hypnagogia (2018), placed greater emphasis on melody and became their first concept album. Its story, developed by drummer and lyricist Vince Verkay, follows a wounded World War I soldier who traps part of his soul in a journal, passing his suffering to those who read it.
For Mendacium, guitarist and vocalist John Paradiso sought a return to the darker sound of their early recordings. Released through Profound Lore on October 17, 2025, the album was co-produced, engineered, mixed and mastered by Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal. It continues their use of fictional narratives, telling the story of an ailing 14th-century Benedictine monk tormented by an entity whose reality is left uncertain.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.