The Eviscerate Tour Eidola w/ Royal Coda, Wolf & Bear, Sani Bronco
Eidola
EIDOLA have returned to utterly defy expectations and reach exhilarating heights. The enigmatic existential post-hardcore band hailing from Salt Lake City, Utah is back once again to push the limits of the art form to its breaking point. Seeking to explore new territory with an ambitious follow up to their critically acclaimed album The Architect, the dynamically heavy and deeply sorrowful Eviscerate paves eclectically violent sonic ground while remaining true to the band’s profound lyricism and meaning.
If you could sum up Eidola’s genre-annihilating decade of creating music it might be insightful, explorative, deeply emotional, extremely dynamic post-hardcore. Eviscerate underlines the urgency of the human condition and captures the depth of sorrow, loss, and hatred in modernity.
“No Weapon Formed Shall Prosper” rips right out the gate, blisteringly fast and heavy, with powerful vocals and a call to immediate action. “Who Of You Will Persevere?” pays homage to the band’s energetic rock history with hooky verses and passionate choruses that outline the struggle of true competition. The undeniably brutal arrangement “Fistful Of Hornets” is a chaotic masterpiece of expert musicianship boiled down to a mind melting 2 and half minutes.
The album kicks off with a poignant foreshadowing in the lines “I am all and I was made to suffer, I will watch as everything that I love dies. I am one, and I was ground down to nothing.” A stanza that perfectly encapsulates the heartfelt, esoteric, and melancholic journey the listener is about to embark on for the remaining 12 tracks.
Eidola began in 2012 when vocalist Andrew Wells, guitarist and vocalist Matthew Dommer, bassist James Johnson, and drummer Matt Hansen collectively ended their competing local Utah bands and joined forces to create something brand new. After self- releasing their first album The Great Glass Elephant the band quickly gained notoriety
in their local scene and regional touring circuits, eventually garnering the attention of Will Swan of Dance Gavin Dance. The band signed to Blue Swan Records and released their first official LP Degeneraterra in May of 2015 and immediately began touring DIY nationwide.
After earning their place among the up and coming post-hardcore community, the band sought to delve further into mathematics and eastern philosophy with their breakout follow up To Speak, To Listen in June of 2017. Produced and engineered by Dryw Owens (A Lot Like Birds, From Indian Lakes), the album was the band’s first billboard
charting success and landed them a budding loyal fanbase amid multiple national support tours with Hail The Sun, Capstan, Chon, and Dance Gavin Dance. This phase also saw the band bring full time guitarist Sergio Medina (Royal Coda, Sianvar) into the fold for the exciting horizon ahead.
On a steady pace toward international acclaim, the band began writing and recording their well spoken and endearing third album The Architect, produced by Kris Crummet (Issues, Sleeping With Sirens, Memphis May Fire). This process was almost completely derailed when singer/songwriter Andrew Wells attempted suicide in 2019. After dealing with suicidal ideation and depression on constant tours between Eidola and his more permanent position as the guitarist/vocalist of Dance Gavin Dance, the weight of it all proved to be too much. Wells says “it was a very difficult time in my life. After spending that time in an in-patient center and seeking therapy afterward, I made it my mission to be outspoken about mental health and my journey to recovery.”
As Wells began his journey to recovery, the band was able to finish The Architect and began planning a massive roll out to follow up a steadily growing career in the genre. As they finalized these plans the COVID pandemic swept the world and put the entirety of the music industry on pause. The band had time to reflect on what they wanted out of their art and decided to spend more time crafting and cultivating the best release they could imagine, so that when the world was ready they would be equally inclined.
In September of 2021, after numerous delays and personal obstacles, the band finally released The Architect to near universal praise, netting the band its highest billboard charting slot, solidifying the bands cult following, and enabling them to tour with Polyphia, Veil Of Maya, and a slew of other heavy hitters. The success enabled the band to embark on their first major headline tours and sell out rooms across the country, as well as embark on their first international tour to the UK.
Newly motivated, back on track, and ready to take their ambitions to dramatically new heights; the band hired Mike Sahm as the producer for their 13 song blistering epic Eviscerate. “We spent our downtime completely immersed in our desire to push our own limitations” says Wells. “We wanted to take the concepts of this project and double down on the things we felt were most ambitious and exploratory. While keeping our core sound, we chose to experiment with a new producer, 7 string guitars, deep drop tunings, and lean into the violence and loss in our lyrical content.”
The exploration is apparent on the band’s 5th full length release. Their traditionally discussed concepts of wrestling with faith, psychology, human history, and hope are deeply entrenched in newly delved territory of loss, grief, hatred, despair, and coping with absolute abysmal chaos. Eidola seeks to evoke substance in every chord, depth in every lyric, and begs the listener to question the foundations of their very own reality. The enigmatic post-hardcore band shows no signs of slowing as they showcase their lust for the dynamics of the human experience on Eviscerate.