|
|
EVESTUS' "Wastelands" album has got some cool reviews
lately, and here they all are in one place. Click
here
to return to the main news page on the CD's track details, where to
purchase the CD.
Exclaim Magazine
(www.exclaim.ca)
Terrorizer Magazine
(www.terrorizer.com)
Connexionbizarre
(www.connexionbizarre.net)
Hailing from Talinn, Estonia, Evestus began work as a solo electronic music project around 2004. "Destiny in Life", his self-released hardcore-industrial debut album was later re-released by the Canadian label D-Trash Records and, in 2006 Evestus released his second full-length recording, "Wastelands", an album which draws inspiration from the universe of the "Fallout" computer game series. Coming from D-Trash records and judging from the cover I was expecting something along the lines of a no holds barred post-apocalyptic digital hardcore/industrial assault. To my surprise, what I found is more adequately described as an excellent and engaging, sample-heavy soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic road movie with plenty of 50's 'Atomic Age' retro feel and the occasional "Mad Max" references thrown in (a track titled "Thunderdome" should be pretty obvious). "Don't judge a book by its cover" and all that...
Narrative pieces from "Fallout", two tracks, "Intro - Leaving The Vault" and "Visions Of Before", provide setting and context for the album. Placed at the beginning and end of "Wastelands", they divide the album into roughly two halves. The first half seems to focus on bits and pieces of a hypothetical main character, while the second half functions more like a world description. "Cat's Paw" provides an epilogue of sorts, while an untitled last track aims at providing some perspective at the past and present of US politics.
Most, if not all tracks, consist of musical constructs arranged around samples which form the core of the "Wastelands" experience. Musically, the album is anything but easy to describe, considering the variety of musical styles that is present in it, as Evestus seems to be quite at ease working with a variety of music styles, whether composing or sampling them, from jazz to industrial and breakbeats to hardcore. Testament to his sampling and musical skills is that "Wastelands", both as isolated tracks and as a whole, functions extremely well and each half flows almost without a glitch, the album being a textbook example of accomplished musicianship and tasteful sampling skills.
Eclectic and full of ear-catching twists and turns, "Wastelands" is a case in which no single track can be considered as being representative of the album but there are stand out tracks. "Reflection" is a particularly memorable one, starting from the catchy cello and rhythm work and culminating with the clever use of sampled Travis Bicker lines. The jazzy "Health Guide", while seemingly playful on the surface, becomes deadly serious when one listens to the commercial's words more attentively. In the second half, the "Navarro"-"Fallout"-"Vault Tec" is particularly effective, from an almost ambient start to a composition revolving about the dangers of radioactive fallout, culminating in an almost epic track with pounding beats and intense guitars. For those wanting a dose of digital hardcore, "Jetflight Part II - Bad Trip" is the track to look out for, merging contrasting elements into a chaotic but highly coherent whole.
Skilfully composed and performed, "Wastelands" is an evocative album that defies simple categorization and is sure to appeal to a wide audience, despite (or perhaps because) of the large amount of musical elements and influences which are successfully merged in Evestus' compositions. It is a must for anyone interested in good music and confirms Evestus as a musician to be on the lookout for in the future.
-- Miguel de Sousa [9/10]
Regen-Mag Magazine
(www.regenmag.com)
A journey through Wastelands is well worth the trip. No gas mask required!
Evestus didn't let the idea of nuclear holocaust get him down. Instead, he took inspiration from the end of the world as we know it and created his own ode to death and destruction, adding a bit of humor, reverence, and sound clips from the Mad Max franchise. Structured like the memoir of a journey across a vast and desolate wasteland, the listener follows our lone hero as he encounters a strange and hostile new world. In "Intro - Leaving the Vault," heavy beats illustrate the mood and provide a fitting backdrop to the narrative dialogue that explains that the end of the world went exactly as expected. The somber mood continues in the vividly instrumental driven "Reflection," and seemingly Nine Inch Nails inspired "Outdoorsman" as our hero trudges through the heat, wind, and stinging sand toward some semblance of normalcy and civilization. What he finds is a reality in only the most nightmarish sense. The whimsical "Health Guide" inspires images of a deserted saloon where the only movement is a nearly destroyed robotic display, reading off the items necessary for survival in the wastelands. "Thunderdome," while typical of the end of the world fare, avoids becoming trite by keeping the listener fully engaged with industrial beats and surprising orchestrations. Well crafted and executed, Wastelands is a beautiful piece of near future science fiction illustrated through musical imagery and haunting dialogue. Now even the apocalypse has a soundtrack. By: Charity VanDeberg
Chain-DLK Magazine
(www.chain-dlk.com)
From Evestus’s biography:
“My biggest influences are Cartoons and videogames... screw that:
FALLOUT! FALLOUT 2 changed my freckin life! The world I experienced
playing that game is what I’m trying to bring to people through my
music! I bring you the newwave of Electronic punk, Post apocalypse pop.”
That sounds about right. I must admit that I have a special place in my
heart for the post-nuclear holocaust genre. I actually remember the
drills and having to know where fallout shelters were (yeah, I know that
this dates me a bit). The packaging is great—straight out of 1950’s
civil defense propaganda (“duck and cover” and the Civil Defense logo on
the CD are nice touches). On to the music. Mad Max movies and other
post-apocalyptic sources are heavily sampled in this album. This is beat
driven, but if you are looking for hard and fast, you will be
disappointed. In fact, “Health Guide – Featuring Stitch” is a nice swing
track. “Visions of Before” is nice militaristic neo-classical with snare
drum and synthesized strings. “Jet Flight part 2 – Bad Trip” begins with
good harsh noisy beats, but then becomes more laid back. Overall, this
is difficult to pigeonhole into a particular style, which is often a
good thing. There seems to be a bit of everything here. That is not to
say that the disc is random and inconsistent. The tracks all work
together to make a cohesive whole. The samples also seem to work well
with the music, creating a story rather than simply using them as a kind
of shortcut as usually happens. This is a good album, but not terribly
club friendly if that’s the kind of thing that you’re looking for. This
is the first that I had heard from D-Trash or Evestus. So far, so good.
Adnoiseam Records (www.adnoiseam.net)
"Dtrash
usually rhyhmes with hard digital hardcore fury, a reason why this new
album by Evestus came as a surprise. Very laid back, mixing a lot of
jazzy instrumentation with a lot of voice samples, constant accoustic
drumming and the occasional epic guitar riff, "Wastelands" is more of a
fun album (in the way of End's "The sound of disaster") than a noisy
wall of beats. The whole thing is surprisingly well recorded and
contains several pearls. Uncommon and very pleasant."
Goth-Tronic (www.gothtronic.com)
"Hardcore-industrial-sample-heavy-fun-hardcore experiments", "Distorted
vocals over a Dixieland jazz-band" and "multi-layered work of
contemplative avant-garde industrial-electronica" are some of the
phrases used in the biography of this Estonian band. D-Trash makes it
hard to name it, and Evestus themselves are making it even more
challenging. Evestus has it's roots in a metal band, but decided to
experiment more and therewith created Evestus: a project that has many
layers and sounds and is very difficult to conceive. "Wastelands" is a
concept, but not based on a book or movie. The regular WW2-relation is
put aside and Evestus takes the computer game Fallout 2 as foundation
for this work. The game tells the story of a world destroyed after a
nuclear war and Evestus uses each of the years as a base for a song on
the album. The songs describe the world before, during and after the
bombings and therewith founding titles like 'What Have We Done' and
'Visions Of Before'. A very nice concept, but musically not very
interesting. Evestus has the ability to do way better. What can you
compare it with? Well, distorted vocals over a Dixieland jazz-band, I
think that sums it up quite well. -Eelco
Virus Magazine (www.virus-mag.com)
"Estonian artist Evestus’ 2nd full-length CD, “Wastelands”,
is music inspired by the computer game “Fallout 2”. In other words,
welcome to the “Mad Max/The Road Warrior” set, a post-apocalypso world
ravaged by global nuclear war... What I found to be odd was that this CD
sounds nothing like you think it should. I was expecting bleak
noisescapes and the sound of crudely constructed machinery and the
sizzle of clumsily wired electronics. Instead, what you have here are
persistent melodies, entwined with bunker music, jazz loops, and
samples. There are some great atomic age propaganda bites and earnest
duck and cover calls for safety, as well as a beckon for civil defense
preparedness straight from a government flunky-scripted public service
announcement. Created, mixed, and mastered by Evestus, the music has a
definite soundtrack quality, even though it does contradict the thematic
structure. Perhaps the message of the music is that, despite the
devastation of nuclear war, the human spirit will always find some way
to endure the massive stupidity of fools and overzealous gluttons. 7/10" -Michael Casano
back |
