Church of the Sea – Eva | soundsfromthedarkside

Just so you know, Church of the Sea’s Eva is a serious contender for one of my favourite albums of the year. Does it demand a review then? You bet.

Last time I bored you to bits with the story about my 2025 playlist so I’ll keep it short and simple now. I collect everything interesting to me each year in a single playlist on a streaming platform and then stuff grabs my attention. Now how’s that for some fried and abbreviated gold? In all seriousness though, Eva, the sophomore effort by Greek doomgaze collective Church of the Sea follows the independently released Odalisque, which garnered enough critical acclaim back in 2022 that they drew the attention of These Hands Melt in order to release their second record.

If you haven’t already listened to the video below or have gone straight to Bandcamp instead, you might wonder what kind of band this is. So picture Eva being the love child of Messa and Dead Can Dance with hints of metalised folk like you might know from projects like Myrkur or Darkher. Songs can start ghostly and ethereal, like the title track for example, with plodding keyboard sounds and vocalist Irene chanting her vocal lines, not seldomly reminding of Lisa Gerrard, with subdued and indistinct guitar chords only joining in halfway to add gravitas to the song, brooding and building for almost five minutes. It edges you towards a climax that never really comes, and that’s the beauty of Eva.

Most of the songs are quiet, looming pieces. There’s a constant sense of brooding, like we’re lurching towards an unknown horizon, unsure of what lies beyond it. And then, when you reach a song like Garden of Eden, where the band pretty much goes all out when it comes to creating a wall of sound, it feels like a deserved pay-off. That might sound negative, like you have to congratulate yourself for having just sat through twenty minutes of middling music only to finally stumble onto something really good, but it isn’t. It’s the way Eva builds up that makes the bigger moments feel so much bigger than they would have been on their own.

It’s the constant ebb and flow that makes Eva such an interesting album. The trio from Athens really knows what they’re doing here and manage to captivate throughout its thirty minute runtime. One minute you’re deep into introspective shoegaze territory, like in both bookending parts of How To Build A Universe, when the next you know it you’re listening to full-blown doom (Churchyard might be the best example of this). The musicianship is good on Eva. Competent but nothing overtly fancy found here; you will have to search elsewhere for your arpeggios, sweep picking solos or operatic wails. Eva, and Church of the Sea by extension, are about atmosphere first and foremost and they deliver that in spades on their second album.

Fans of gloomier “almost metal” bands like Messa or Ponte del Diavolo that like their shoegaze/doomgaze infused with folk elements are sure to find something good on Eva, if perhaps not all of it. Church of the Sea’s second album is short and sweet, but excellent from start to finish. One could argue it’s too short, running for little over half an hour, but within the confines of those thirty minutes, every chord, every vocal line and every harmony counts, and Church of the Sea definitely makes sure they count. You know when someone says that it’s the journey that matters and not the destination? Eva is that journey. So do yourself a favour and make it.