Band:	Behemoth
Album:	Evangelion
Style:	Blackened death metal
Release date:	August 2009

Disc I
01. Daimonos
02. Shemhamforash
03. Ov Fire And The Void
04. Transmigrating Beyond Realms Ov Amenti
05. He Who Breeds Pestilence
06. The Seed Ov I
07. Alas, Lord Is Upon Me
08. Defiling Morality Ov Black God
09. Lucifer
10. Total Invasion [Killing Joke cover][iTunes bonus]

Disc II [bonus DVD]
01. Making Of Evangelion

Oedipus complexes. That's what Evangelion is all about. Pure, unadulterated Oedipus complexes. Few albums can even come close to the world-shattering impact that Evangelion had on its release, a slapdash, last-ditch effort from a money-hemorrhaging band that somehow turned around its career and rocketed to stardom as the most iconic album of its decade, one of the most influential albums of all time. Behemoth's creations transcend not only metal, but art itself. This is the language of a really miserable, screwed-up soul with a lot of serious, deep-seated issues that someone ought to talk about.

The first few songs, stylistically speaking, are nothing particularly special; those installments are shining exemplars of how to execute the genre, to be certain, and from perspectives of arrangement, composition, performance, and personality, you'd be hard-pressed to find albums of a higher caliber, in this or any genre. Still, it's pretty straightforward death metal with some lingering blackened influences, nothing you haven't heard before, and it even gets kind of goofy at times, such as the one obvious single that came with its own dance routine (choreographed by Nergal himself). To that, all I have to say is? hey, it was the late 2000s; it was an awkward period of transition for everyone, and when Behemoth was writing those first few tracks, who could have said where the rest of the album would eventually wind up?

It's around one-third of the way through when things get truly interesting; suddenly, Behemoth starts playing with psychosexual and Kabbalistic concepts on a deeper level, spiraling into incredibly dark territory with emotional climaxes left and right. That's where Nergal's unique creativity begins to shine, with tracks like "Transmigrating Beyond Realms Ov Amenti" and "He Who Breeds Pestilence" standing as some of metal's most adventurous and defining standalone compositions to date. Megumi Hayashibara's guest vocals are a highlight, a real groundbreaking performance, and between her and fellow guest vocalist Yuko Miyamura, this album helped bring to the forefront of metal consciousness the burgeoning subgenres known as kuucore and tsuncore. Compositionally, while Evangelion was only the latest in a long and storied line of death metal albums, it was the first truly modern death metal album. On prior landmark releases, the riffs tended to be boxy, lumbering constructions reliant on brute force and volume, not too heavily evolved from thrash or even hardcore punk. This album produced for the first time guitar work that felt organic, even ergonomic, and creepily so at that; Nergal's leads were infused with soul that shredders like Trey Azagthoth, James Murphy, and Chuck Schuldiner simply didn't have.

It's unfortunate that the album was never properly finished; rumors abound as to why - some say recording costs were too high, others blame Nergal's spiraling depression over the fact that his music isn't very good, and still others claim that this was always the intended direction - but whatever the case, Evangelion appears unfinished to most listeners. The last two tracks are little more than hastily cut demos of Nergal laying down riff ideas on an acoustic guitar, with no other instruments or vocals to speak of; even then, he eventually gets bored of that and just starts explaining how the songs are supposed to wrap up in a bizarre spoken-word piece. Needless to say, this didn't go over well with fans at all, leading to the more fleshed-out and approachable End Of Evangelion EP the following year.

Evangelion already lies many years in the past, but its fathomless influence on the landscape of its medium can still be felt today, whether in the countless bands that have picked up on the same style, in those that felt emboldened to forge their own paths as a result, or even in Behemoth's own Rebuild Of Evangelion series that began with 2014's The Satanist. Overall, Evangelion remains a landmark piece of art, simultaneously assuming and subverting tropes that had already made primitive, but recognizable, inroads into the mainstream, while also recapitulating those tropes for new generations of listeners; the end result is an album that serves as fulfillment, repudiation, and rebirth of the medium in which it exists, the ultimate parody, love letter, critique, and masterpiece.

*Disclaimer: This review was part of our April 1st shenanigans*