Evocation are from Sweden but luckily for everyone concerned they don’t rip off At The Gates and instead farm the old school Entombed and Dismember school of death metal. To be fair to the band though, they first started back in the early nineties and even released one uber rare demo before splitting up. 2007 sees the band reform and release their debut album.

The album opens with Eternal Lie and it blasts out of the speakers like Entombed circa 1991. This is fast, pummeling death metal with a little bit of melody and comes across like a missing track from Clandestine. Chronic Hell is another kickass song but again it’s pretty easy to spot the band’s influences and this time it’s Dismember circa Like An Everflowing Stream that gets plundered. Of course, this is not to say that Evocation are mere plagiarists. While they have a lot of similarities in their sound to the two bands mentioned, the songs are wrapped up in a modern warm sounding production and the guitar leads are mostly pretty cool. The guitarists too break out and carry on some pretty modern riffing but for the most part this album is pure nostalgia.

From Menace To Mayhem changes tempo a bit and it's ultra melodic, mixing At The Gates and Dissection style riffing with some very modern breakdowns. It’s catchy as fuck and works really well. After this though , the album gets back to it’s Entombed worship with Blessed Upon The Altar. The vocalist sounds like a cross between L G Petrov (Entombed) and Jan-Chris De Koeyer (Gorefest) and this style is perfect for the music. Phase Of Fear though is the song where they come closest to sounding like Entombed clones. Every thing about this song from the guitar tone (Stranger Aeons) to the vocals (Sinners Bleed). Then to top it off there’s a faithful cover of But Life Goes On from Entombed’s classic debut.

Evocation is one of those bands that sounded great on the first listen. Then by the time I’d spun this a few more times the influences became clear and it left me wondering why I was bothering with this album at all when I could just play the old Entombed/ Dismember classics.

At the same time I also have to say that although the band is derivative and sounds too much like one of my favourite death metal bands of all time (Entombed), there’s enough happening on these songs with the modern death metal parts and the very cool production to guarantee that Tales From The Tomb is worth a few listens. Still, Tales From The Tomb is by no means essential.



Label: Cyclone Temple
Year of Release: 2007