Evemaster

Like At the Gates and In Flames (both from Sweden), Finland's Evemaster is among the Scandinavian death metal/black metal bands that has embraced the style known as "melodic death metal." Evemaster isn't death metal in the grindcore sense; they don't sound like Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, or Cancer, who are among the bands that have epitomized the amelodic, consistently ultra-fast, grindcore style of death metal. Rather, Evemaster takes certain aspects of death metal/black metal -- an extreme and totally over-the-top vocal style, very dark and troubling lyrics -- and combines them with an actual sense of melody and harmony. Musically, Evemaster owes a lot to '80s power metal and has been influenced by old-school headbangers like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Queensr˙che, but the sort of extreme vocals that lead singer Jarno Taskula brings to Evemaster certainly aren't something that one will find on Queensr˙che's Operation: Mindcrime or Maiden's The Number of the Beast. In various interviews, Evemaster's members have been quoted as saying that although their lyrics are dark, they don't identify with the term black metal because they don't identify with Satanism and the Occult. Evemaster was formed in Finland in 1996, when Taskula got together with composer/arranger Tommi Mäkinen (who plays guitar and bass, and has been with another Finnish band called Shamos). Together, Taskula and Mäkinen are Evemaster's co-leaders, and instead of being totally self-contained, they employed various session players and guest musicians on their late-'90s and early 2000s recordings. Evemaster first entered the studio in 1996, when they recorded a three-song demo cassette titled In Thine Majesty; subsequently, that demo was reissued on CD in Bulgaria by the small Topheth label, and in...