Oh we all missed this so much, the overpriced lager, the burning sun, the dirty portaloos, the poor phone signal because of the overwhelmed antennas, and, for the bravest, the joys of surviving in an easy-rip tent for days. 2022 marked the much anticipated return of festivals after two years of cancellations due to the you-know-what. The festival season is almost over, but we’re not quite there yet lads – before we wrap up this great return, a carefully-curated group of metal bands is bound for León Guanajuato, Mexico for Candelabrum Metal Fest. Standing out in this lineup are the American masters of extreme and funeral doom metal, Evoken. We had the unique opportunity of talking to John Paradiso, singer, guitarist and founding member of Evoken, ahead of their show in Candelabrum Fest. So prepare a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy a delightful conversation on doom.
PABLO: Thank you so much John for the opportunity. Pablo Custodio here, from Caperuzo, Mexico. I’m very happy to talk to you because Evoken is one of my favourite bands, so I have a bunch of questions for you, so let’s get into it, we don’t have much time.
PABLO: First thing, I just came back from Czech Republic, I went to Brutal Assault.
JOHN: Really? That was amazing
PABLO: yeah, I still have here my Brutal Assault cup. And I saw you guys playing there, of course. It was amazing, such an amazing gig. But while I was seeing you guys playing there I had a bunch of questions about it. The first one was, you know, big open-air festivals are very joyful, happy events – the summer environment, the vibe, everybody gets drunk and everybody wants to moshpit to whatever they can. We had Greg Mackintosh from Paradise Lost with his new band [Strigoi] calling for the slowest moshpit ever, [both laugh] absolutely ridiculous. But my point is that it’s a very happy environment. And my question is, how is it for a band of such a dark nature like Evoken to play in this environment and is there any difference when you compare it to when you play in a doom-metal-dedicated event, like a gig that you guys headline, is there a difference for you?
JOHN: Well, the main difference is the scope of the show usually is a lot smaller when we headline. So Brutal Assault was so massive and so well-done. When you’re playing with that kind of power behind you, like PA system, it’s so massive, you really get to, like, your music becomes much more stronger, when it’s going through such a massive PA. And we have our own sound engineer who helps us hone our sound, to make sure everything’s heard correctly. So it feels much more mightier to play like the big festivals. But as far as the atmosphere, it does feel very much like a family, where everybody gets along, it’s just like a great time, even though it’s miserable music [laughs], it’s still like a great time.
PABLO: And what about the weather in this case for open-air festivals? You guys played at midnight, which I though was really good.
JOHN: It was perfect! Unbelievable
PABLO: Yeah, it was perfect for a band like Evoken to play at midnight. And in fact, Skepticism played even later, I think they played like 1am or something. But have you guys ever played under the summer sun? Like, I don’t know, 4pm or something like that. Because, for me it’s hard to imagine that and also would that affect the atmosphere in some way?
JOHN: Yeah, so we played Metal Days which was like the third show in on this tour that we just finished, and it was in the afternoon and lights had no effect, stage lights didn’t do anything. And it’s just this relies on the music and it does lose its special quality when it’s in the middle of the day. Much more suited for like night time with the fog and smoke machines
PABLO: Like in the fortress, right? In Brutal Assault
JOHN: Yeah, that was like the most perfect show ever
PABLO: Oh nice that you really really enjoyed, same as us!
PABLO: Next question is not related to festivals. So I remember reading an interview that you did with Kostas Panagiotou from Pantheist, ages ago. I don’t know if it was you actually, but it was somebody from Evoken with Kostas from doom-metal.com. I just read it recently again and it makes me think of how much things have change since then because I remember you guys were saying that you guys would like come play in Europe but at the time there was no enough promotion from the label, there was no exposure for funeral and extreme doom metal bands in general so you guys couldn’t fly all the way to Europe. But now you guys are playing in many festivals in Europe, you guys played Brutal Assault, you guys played Metal Days, and you guys also played Hellfest in 2013. And we also see this with bands like Skepticism, Shape of Despair, Esoteric… So my question is, what do you think opened the doors for extreme doom? Not only to Europe, but you guys are also playing in Mexico soon. What do you think made this big change that we see now?
JOHN: I think it helped that more people are able to get our music. It wasn’t that hard to buy our CDs and now I think being more available just made the demand a lot stronger. So when somebody mentioned our name and put us like on the market for like “I have this band, this package coming through” we got more people’s attention because I think we sold some more music and more people picked up on it, you know. Because before it was really hard, people just didn’t know who we were or didn’t even know we were around. So the more people know we are around we get a little stronger vibe and draw a little more people and numbers can be better. So we shocked ourselves we were able to draw this headline a decent amount, promoters weren’t totally upset, they were like “alright, it wasn’t as bad as we that it was gonna be and it actually turned out pretty good”. And I’m sure people are accepting this type of music more, or is realising how good it was the whole time, we knew who was good the whole time!
PABLO: Yeah, I can even see people now talking about Disembowelment like a classic band whilst when I started listening to this type of music nobody talked about them
JOHN: nobody, nobody. It was so rare. Never seen anyone with a Disembowelment shirt. I walked around Brutal Assault Festival, I didn’t really see any funeral doom shirts. I saw a couple of Evoken shirts I was really happy about [laughs]. But I didn’t see anybody.. just the standard Slayer,
PABLO: Overkill
JOHN: Yeah, the normal shirts. But for the most part you don’t see too many. You’re wearing a Mournful Congregation shirt
PABLO: Oh yes, I love this band so much!
JOHN: Yeah, we got to play with these guys in NY. It was awesome!
PABLO: Oh cool cool, yeah, I saw them [once] in London. I live in the UK, that’s how I get access to this type of amazing events in London. A lot of funeral doom happening there [actually not much, but more than in most of places, for sure!]
PABLO: So, next question. You guys appeared in an article published by the Guardian like last year or two years ago, something like that. The article tried to pinpoint the heaviest bands in the world and they said Evoken was one of them. And they also talked about other obvious examples like Electric Wizard, like Sunn O))) and I don’t remember what other bands, but these were examples. I think in this topic we all agree that the definition of heaviness is a personal one – like everybody responds in a different way or reacts in a different way to music so it’s up to you to say what’s heavy and what’s not. But since you are the expert in this topic, I would really love to hear what for you is a heavy song, what makes a song heavy, and in that case what’s an example of a heavy band
JOHN: I think like, I don’t know if you would agree with this but did you see Clutch at Brutal Assault?
PABLO: Oh yeah, definitely!
JOHN: They were so heavy without even trying to be heavy! There was this sound that was hitting the people in the audience. And that was, believe it or not, that was like an inspiration for our tone because we love Clutch, Nick [Orlando] and I in the beginning. You can be slow and tone down, like Conan, you’ve heard of Conan, right?
PABLO: who, sorry?
JOHN: have you heard the band Conan, from the UK?
PABLO: Oh yeah, sorry, my pronunciation! I call them “coh-nan” [speaks in dodgy Mexican accent]. Yeah sure!
JOHN: They’re one of the heaviest bands I’ve ever heard live besides Sunn O)))
PABLO: Yeah, that’s quite an experience, isn’t it?
JOHN: Yeah, it’s unbelievable what they do. They have a lot of amplifiers on stage. They’re really trying to be something overwhelming, you know. But as far as heavy, it can be… There’s some death metal bands playing Brutal Assault, it was heavy but, I don’t know, it didn’t overwhelm me with the sense of dread, you know, like Evoken does and like Esoteric, Shape of Despair. So I guess it’s an emotional thing for me that makes it heavy, more than this trynna-sound-heavy, you know it’s more like what you put into it from your heart, I think
PABLO: yeah, rather than speed, right? And brutal.. death metal
JOHN: I mean, if you really really feel it, and you’re not pretending or being pretentious about it I think it comes across, that’s true.
PABLO: True! So, next question. You guys come from a generation of extreme doom metal bands that at the time were really really obscure, very underground I remember, like Dolorian…
JOHN: Dolorian! Yes!
PABLO: Until Death Overtakes Me – one of my favourite bands -, Void of Silence, and of course Pantheist, Avernus, I think they’re from Chicago. But now things have change, so my question is how much do you still dig into very underground extreme doom, how often do you go on internet and search for new bands that are obscure, but probably they will change in the future, and if you still do it, what would be a good recommendation for us of a good extreme doom metal band that’s probably not playing in festivals because is very underground
JOHN: I actually got a call from the studio that we made our last three records at. The engineer called me personally and said “I have somebody here who’s recording a record and he brought your CD as a reference, he said ‘I want my record to sound like these guys’, so I called you up” and the band was called Worm.
PABLO: Oh yes!
JOHN: And I was so blown away at somebody cos we’ve done the same thing, we brought a Disembowelment CD, we brought Tryptikon, we brought like a Winter record, you know Winter?
PABLO: yeah, of course!
JOHN: We brought these CDs into studio and we said we want to get into this, we want to sound like this. So to have somebody do that with my CD as a reference, I was blown away! And then their record sounds great
PABLO: Yeah, I love that record, it was last year, wasn’t it? This band used to play black metal before, didn’t they? It was a change in the good direction!
JOHN: Yeah [laughs]. And there’s a few other ones too. I’m wearing a shirt [stands up and shows logo on tshirt], Vacant Eyes. They’re really good, they have a lot of keyboard elements, like a lot of sense, but they’re heavy and emotional, like Pantheist, they’re in the line of Pantheist, you know.
PABLO: Oh, I need to check’em out. I’ve heard the name, but I haven’t listened to them
JOHN: There is a lot of bands out there that do what we started doing, what we still do.
PABLO: Thank you very much, for the recommendation!
PABLO: Next one is about the old days. I have a copy here [shows tape at camera] of the demo, Shades of Night Descending, but this is the one that was released by Dread Records I think a couple of years ago, or a year ago, last year or something like that, but I have a copy here. The interesting thing about this cassette is that they included the original artwork and they also added the new logo of Evoken. And the question is, the original logo of Evoken, which I actually have on a tshirt that you guys sent me a while ago, is one of the most beautiful logos I’ve ever seen in a metal band, it’s one of my favourite logos. And I always wondered why you guys no longer use it. I guess it’s because of music evolution, right? Because you guys used to have some strong death metal influence in this demo and now it’s a bit more atmospheric. I don’t know.
JOHN: Well, we still use it. The tour shirt, you haven’t seen the tour shirt yet? It has that logo on the front really big, like the logo tee that you have. Yeah, it’s still in use a lot but the illustrators for those newer records.. like we also went Thergothon, you know the band Thergothon
PABLO: yeah, they started the whole thing, right?
JOHN: We only install the name we also like copy the logo with the boxes, everything. So we have a few logos, but we still use that old logo, so it’s not ever gonna go away. Don’t worry about that.
PABLO: Thank you! Yeah, whenever I wear that tshirt everybody asks me what band that is, when I say Evoken, they’re like “I know the band, I didn’t know that logo”
JOHN: Yeah, it’s hard to read. Like if somebody asked me if I had dropped spaghetti on my shirt, it looked like spaghetti dropped onto my chest [laughs]. Vinnie [Verkay], the drummer, he made that logo like 92, 93
PABLO: Yeah, I think he’s credited in the insert, somewhere but yeah, but he’s here definitely. Thank you.
PABLO: Thanks. So last question: Many doom metal bands stop playing doom metal after a couple of albums. Of course we know the stories of bands like Paradise Lost or Pyogenesis from Germany, which I think it’s the worst case, right? [laughs]. But many bands, many doom metal bands do it. And I was wondering why, I guess they just get bored or they become really happy people, I don’t know, but they do it. And Evoken has evolved, definitely, but certainly you remain inside the same umbrella of extreme doom, funeral doom, death/doom, you know, the same feeling. So what makes Evoken so loyal to doom?
JOHN: It could be lack of talent [both laugh], no, I’m joking. I feel like a lot, like Paradise Lost they wanted to go, maybe they got a taste of what it could be to be like commercially successful if they sound more like, you know, Nic, he wasn’t growling all the time tried to like James Hetfield.
PABLO: Yeah, in Icon, right?
JOHN: So that could’ve been a cause of why they strayed away from it. But I feel like My Dying Bride really stuck to it, even though [Aaron] doesn’t do as many growls I think they do still sound miserable
PABLO: Defenitely!
JOHN: They’re some of the strongest ones from back in the day. But the reason why we stayed was because we still feel like we haven’t made our… the first Disembowelment, the only Disembowelment record, I feel we still haven’t reached that level yet. We still have to make that level of record. Because that album when I heard it for the first time, it totally changed my life, it was something I’ve never heard before.
PABLO: I can hear that influence, especially in the clean guitars that you guys add on the top. I love it, same as Worm did it, they included that.
JOHN: Yeah, we’re not trying to be copycats but you know, you hear something that you love and you’re like “I gotta make this sound like this for myself”. So I think that’s the reason why we don’t feel like we’ve made our best yet, so we’re gonna keep going. And I don’t know, like, I still feel like I can growl so I’m gonna keep doing this as long as I can. I really feel strong about this music too.
PABLO: Definitely, your growls sound amazing in [Brutal Assault]
JOHN: That’s what I’m saying. All that power!
PABLO: Yeah, I was a bit drunk, but I was blown away! [both laugh]
JOHN: I appreciate that. That’s crazy you were there. Where are you right now?
PABLO: I’m in Nottingham, in the UK. I live here, but I’m from Guanajuato where you guys are playing in León Guanajuato. I’m from Guanajuato, that’s my hometown [actually Yuriria, Guanajuato]. I’m really happy you guys are playing there, I mean, I won’t be able to be there because it’s a bit far. But I’m totally supporting that festival.
JOHN: Yeah, it’s gonna be great!
PABLO: Thank you very much, that makes it for my questions that I had for you tonight.
JOHN: It was an honour, thank you for being interested in my band. Thank you very much!
PABLO: Cheers!
JOHN: Alright man, take care
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