Even Vast

The Arc of Even Vast

The pivots — what forced Even Vast to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Beaufort Sessions and the Black Lotus Debut

   Scilipoti and Martello ditched their previous project to build something far heavier and slower, recruiting Diego Maniscalco on bass and Paolo Baltaro on drums. They traveled to the Netherlands in August 1998 to track at Beaufort Recording Studio with engineer and organist Han Swagerman. The result was 1999's Hear Me Out, picked up by Greek underground imprint Black Lotus Records. You hear the era's classic Peaceville-indebted doom all over the tape, thick with Swagerman's organ work and Scilipoti's mournful vocal delivery.

2. 02

   Self-Production and the Painkiller Run

   A revolving drum chair began with Massimo Leonardi tracking the 2000 EP Where the Trees Still Speak, produced by Giorgio Negro alongside Martello. By the time they tracked 2003's Outsleeping at One Voice Studio in Chivasso with co-engineer Daniele Giordana, Remy Curtaz was behind the kit. The record came out through Mausoleum via Painkiller Records, showcasing a tighter, drier production style. Martello's guitar tones grew more direct, pulling the band away from atmospheric Dutch studio gloss toward grounded mid-tempo gloom.

3. 03

   The Aosta Pivot to Goth-Rock

   Setting up camp at H-soundstudio in Aosta, Martello took total reins over recording, producing, and mixing their next chapter. With new bassist Vincenzo Di Leo on board, they signed to My Kingdom Music and dropped 2007's Teach Me How to Bleed. The record abandoned straight-up metal pacing for driving post-punk rhythms and dark alternative textures, capped off with an overt reading of Joy Division's 'Day of the Lords'. The riffs were less about blunt force and more about cold, angular atmosphere.

4. 04

   The UK Exile and the Sludge Turn

   Relocating their entire operational base from Italy to England stalled the band's release schedule for over a decade. They finally re-emerged through underground imprint The Goatmancer Records with 2019's Warped Existence. The long silence had scrubbed away the lingering goth-rock sheen, replacing it with down-tuned sludge and dragging funeral-paced weight. Scilipoti's voice sits lower in the mix beneath suffocating, fuzz-drenched riffs that sound nothing like their late-nineties beginnings.

Influences

• Joy Division — Even Vast put their lineage right on the sleeve by covering 'Day of the Lords' on Teach Me How to Bleed. The bleak, dead-eyed rhythm section and cold guitar tone of Martin Hannett's production directly shaped Martello's mixing style during the Aosta sessions. You hear that hollow, driving bass presence across the entire 2007 record.
• Black Sabbath — The foundational DNA of Martello's guitar work on Hear Me Out traces straight back to Tony Iommi's tritone grooves and down-tuned, slow-tempo pacing. Track openers rely on that exact heavy blues-scale drag before Scilipoti enters the frame. Without Vol. 4 and Master of Reality, none of their riffs exist.
• My Dying Bride — The early European doom-death boom of the 1990s gave Even Vast their blueprint for mixing crushing chord progressions with mournful, extended lyrical lamentations. Han Swagerman's organ flourishes on Hear Me Out echo the dramatic, despairing keys from Turn Loose the Swans. It was the essential yardstick for anyone tracking slow gothic metal in Europe during the late nineties.
• The Sisters of Mercy — Andrew Eldritch's ice-cold approach to bass-heavy dark rock influenced the mid-career shift on Where the Trees Still Speak and Teach Me How to Bleed. Scilipoti pulled her delivery back into deadpan, shadowy cadences that swapped metal melodrama for gothic detachment. That steady, mechanical forward drive gave their guitars breathing room.
• Candlemass — Leif Edling's operatic, crushing epic doom laid the structural framework for the rhythm section on Outsleeping. The deliberate, tectonic pacing of the drums and Maniscalco's low-end work mirror the classic Swedish doom blueprint established on Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. They treat the riff as an altar to worship rather than a rhythm to speed up.