Behemoth - Evangelion (LP)

Some Behemoth records feel like rituals. Evangelion is one of them. Released in August 2009, it landed as the band’s most focused and punishing statement up to that point, the last chapter of their imperial late 2000s run before life threw them a curveball. It is also a record that makes a lot of sense on wax. If you’ve ever put on a Behemoth vinyl and felt the room tighten as Inferno’s kicks start drilling through the floor, you’ll know the feeling.

The first thing that hits is how clear it all sounds without losing any bite. They tracked drums at Radio Gdańsk with Swedish producer Daniel Bergstrand in the room, a guy known for handling heavy hitters like Meshuggah, and you can tell. Inferno’s blasts have shape, the cymbals breathe, and the toms roll like thunder rather than cardboard. Colin Richardson’s mix is the secret sauce. He gives the riffs air, keeps Orion’s bass snarling in the midrange, and lets the vocals cut without drowning everything else. It’s the kind of balance that makes Evangelion vinyl a treat, because you can ride that low end without the mud.

As an opener, Daimonos sets the tone with that feral lockstep the band perfected around this era. The tremolo lines don’t blur so much as slice, and Nergal’s bark comes across as sermon and scythe at once. Shemhamforash is tighter again, built on a riff that claws its way forward while the drums flip between straight blasts and a swaggering half time that makes your head snap. There is a reason both cuts have stuck in setlists. They’re precision-engineered to summon a pit, but there is craft inside the violence.

Ov Fire and the Void is the gateway track, and for a lot of fans the one that hooked them. The chorus swings hard, and that video by Grupa 13 cemented the band’s theatrical reputation. It still pulls huge sing backs, which is funny when you consider how caustic the lyric is. The title itself points to what Behemoth do here. Evangelion is Greek for good news, a charged move for a band that has spent decades wrestling with religious language and iconography. The album feels like a counter-gospel written in blast beats and iron.

Alas, Lord Is Upon Me might be the sleeper. It moves like a serpent, the guitars sliding between minor key stabs and a grim little motif that lodges in your ear. He Who Breeds Pestilence bites hard too, bringing a pace change that keeps the album’s middle third from turning into a blur. That was always Evangelion’s trick. The Apostasy before it was wild and dense. Here, the band learned how to stack dynamics so you can hear the architecture. When the choir-like backing parts creep in, they colour the songs rather than smother them.

By the time it dropped, Behemoth were already a formidable live act, but Evangelion pushed them into a bigger lane. It debuted on the US Billboard 200, a rare feat for a blackened death metal album at the time, and pulled strong reviews from metal press on both sides of the Atlantic. AllMusic and Metal Hammer singled out the mix of precision and atmosphere, which is pretty much the record’s calling card. It felt like a band stepping out of the niche without sanding off the edges.

For collectors, this is one of those Behemoth albums on vinyl that reminds you why the format rules. The kick drum thump gives your speakers a proper workout, the guitars have grain, and the quiet intros have that little vinyl hush before the storm. If you like to buy Behemoth records online, hunt for a clean pressing with a sturdy sleeve, because the artwork pops under gloss. And if you’re crate digging at a Melbourne record store, don’t be surprised if this sits in the staff picks. It’s often one of the first recommendations for anyone upgrading from a streaming playlist to something you can feel in your hands. Plenty of shops dealing in vinyl records Australia wide keep it in stock for exactly that reason.

Fourteen years and a few chapters later, Evangelion still sounds like a band in absolute command. Nergal, Orion and Inferno lock in like a machine that bleeds. The songs hit hard, but they’re built to last. If you’re building out a Behemoth vinyl shelf, this is a cornerstone. If you’re starting from scratch, it’s the one that will tell you what the fuss is about in a single side.