Sadness

Evangelion

1997 Mystic Production

Review by Miika Kuusinen

After three years of silence, the Swiss avantgarde masters of doom Sadness are now back with their third album ”Evangelion” released by Polish Mystic Productions. ”Evangelion” is a full length album and besides the four new tracks it contains three remastered tracks from their demo and previous two albums. With every album Sadness has played dark, avantgarde and perhaps inaccessible metal. They have influences from doom and black as well as some gothic metal but the mixture created by the band is something I have never heard before.

The first two tracks on this album ”Mr. Faust” and ”Heretic” are disappointments as they are what I would call gothic porno rock. The album artwork of a naked bondage lady just strengthened this image and I was ready to dismiss Sadness into the ditch. The Bio sheet did warn me however, that the new tracks do not represent the style Sadness will show on their third real full length. To my delight the last two new tracks ”Dias De Las Muertes” and ”Nosfera” are similar to their traditional occult doom and my high hopes for their next album still live!

The three old remastered tracks do not offer much, even though the production is slightly better. Sadness and Finnish Unholy share the same insane feeling and atmosphere, which can be clearly heard from the demo track ”Red Script”. These days Sadness prefers spoken male vocals and ethereal female vocals instead of insane shrieks and growls. The heaviness is also quite on the same level as Unholy; Sadness implements more dark gothic and occul elements to their music in form of keyboards.

It is really interesting to see where Sadness is heading. I have this feeling that we haven’t heard all from Sadness yet. The question can be asked "why was Evangelion released?" or "why were the first two tracks put on this album?" It is a decent album if you are already familiar with Sadness but for new fans, it will probably give a bit twisted idea of Sadness and their music.

Perhaps the label simple wanted to raise some money for future Sadness releases. According to their label, a new album will be recorded during the summer of ’98 and the hard to get first two albums ”Sadness” and ”Danteferno” will be re-released in May 98 as a double digipack for the price of one.

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