Carla Bozulich is a real podium veteran. And although this album definitely has no place on a podium, it does deserve a podium place. Not only for its quality, but moreover for the high level of experimentation and originality, and on top of that, the mood. If Gloomy Sunday, the Hungarian suicide song has failed to provide in the effect it promised, then this might do the trick.

The album opens with arguably the best track. Godspeed You! Black Emperor members throw in their cents to kick off with a morbid thirties audio horror play. The instrumentation is abused to create drones, a scary litany of noises and a few short melody lines. Carla herself is (production wise) on top of everything. She sings, screams and weeps with a voice that sounds close to that of Frédérique Spigt, but with the depressed and possessed method of Diamanda Galás. Her work with the alternative country band she is usually identified with, The Geraldine Fibbers, is a hundredfold more accessible but that makes this only more of an adventure to listen to. This first song could be the recording of an exorcism, the morbid rage of a possession or the combined agony of a madhouse. Her voice is continuously very, very tense, in a way that you don’t want to hear it, but you do nonetheless. Maybe it’s comparable to a hysterical cry that goes directly to your bones, just like the music. In that way, and in the way the production compliments the atmosphere, I can honestly say that there is a rather strong similarity with the ritual black metal movement. The rest of the album is a bit less tense, oppressing and neckhair raising, but certainly not less depressing. If the first part resembles Beherit, then the other identifies with Nargaroth.

Although Bozulich’s loops and noises are omnipresent, the influence from her friends of Godspeed You! Black Emperor is directly audible. This does not mean that the album sounds like post-rock, but a lot of parts, especially from the last two tracks sound like part of A Silver Mt. Zion (another project from those guys) album. Especially the echoing bass tones are unmistakably similar to the ones present on albums like He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corners Of Our Rooms. As could be guessed by those knowing that record, Evangelista ends drowning into serene fragility.