I'm not a big Sabbat fan, no, I correct myself, I'm not a big fan of Sabbat albums. For me it's a band that I enjoy more single songs, and I know this first hand because quite a few years ago I had the idea that I was going to listen to the full discographies of all the bands I knew one by one, the first one was Sabbat and I didn't even complete it. I think there's something in their style that doesn't quite work in the full lenghts, either that they don't manage to maintain a stable cadence that makes you want to listen from beginning to end (I don't even find that in their famous The Dwelling), and that many times despite each album having a certainly marked identity I think that most of their works sin more than they should of being quite repetitive. But in this, their second official album, Evoke, I really don't perceive it in the same way, even though they don't use any different formula from the rest of their albums, this work manages to work in an unrepeatable way for the band, although towards the second half it starts to weaken a little, the truth is that this Sabbat release is for me the one that best fulfils the function of an album in making you participate in a journey.
And that journey couldn't start in a better way, after a creepy intro, very suitable for the atmosphere they want to set, they hook you with "Envenom into the Witch's Hole", a song that already shows a big part of what we are going to find in the album, infectious hooks, classic heavy metal orientated riffs and leads soaked by a dark tonality, demonic vocals and in general a band giving 100% of themselves in every performance. I think it's important to stress how vital the inclusion of the heavy metal elements is, it was something they had already tried on the debut album but these always seemed to me to be overly inspired by the NWOBHM sound, making them clash with the rest of the musical dynamics instead of merging naturally, which is precisely what happens here, the heavy metal influence is more universal, really catchy to the ear but without having too obvious references to any one band, helping it to really feel its own thing.
The album could be divided in two different parts, the first one ends with "Torment in the Pentagram" and shows the skillful side of the band, fierce and straightforward songs, with a lot of emphasis on the guitars, showing real flashes and quality displays from Temis Osmond, who does a majestic job in this work, with some spectacular leads and sharp and creative guitar solos, on this side you can appreciate that heavy metal influence from a more technical point of view, paying homage to the tropes of the genre like the galloping riff on "Godz of Satan" or the whole instrumental "Sabasius". From "Beyond the River" onwards the tone changes in most of the songs (except for the final "Metalucifer and Evilucifer" which returns to the tone of the first part) because they start to have a less direct character and open to show more variety, for example the use of clean vocals, in a couple of songs, one could almost say inspired by the alternative metal trend of the moment, to the powerfully atmospheric "Hellhouse" or "The Curse of Phraoh" highly inspired by Mercyful Fate, thus providing a solution to what I had commented at the beginning of how Sabbat has struggled in most of his career to make an album that flows naturally at all times and does not become repetitive.
The guys from Sabbat are able to achieve that without sacrificing any of their characteristics or leaving indifferent in any aspect, it's the album of theirs that I always come back to and the one that I really feel that they have got it right, that's why I consider it one of my favourite black metal albums of all times.
Sample:
Sabbat - Evoke (1992) [Full Album]
