Monarch - Omens

Monarch has always been a band that for me, pulls it off better live than on record. The experience of seeing them crush a small room is so much more enjoyable where as their albums tend to be more dark droning soundtracks that give off a dazed out mindset when going to sleep. 'Omens' however takes a slightly different approach, and I am quite liking this.

The main difference is the tempo has increased. Not much of course but remember those breaks between the crushing riffs on previous albums? Well that is not evident here as on 'Blood Seeress', which comes across more as a series of nodding implosions that form deep gigantic dark holes leading into the core of the earth. Emilie's vocals still sound as tortured as always and comes off as if the core of the earth has a voice and it is screaming in great agony.

After the interlude 'Transylvanian Incantations' which gives off an impression that the destruction has stopped, 'Black Becomes The Sun' comes in with more crushing riffs, but less imploding like 'Blood Seeress' felt. This is like the hard surface around the giant hole is beginning to slowly crack and crumble away leaving big clumps to fall into the giant hole.

This time a clean voice chimes as if a choir of black angels have arrived to watch the chaos unfold. As the song begins to swing into disjointed fills and held up crushing riffs, the voices and whispers become more torturous and painful. Strong winds are pulling into the black core and the skin on the faces of the black angels are being ripped off, revealing black rotting skulls beneath them.

As the tempo begins to pick up pace, the imploding returns and the black angels are stripped down to their rotting bones. They stand still for a brief moment as only the faint whispers remain, and then the core screams as the bones begin their everlasting fall into the gigantic black hole. The clean chimes return as the earth now lays quiet and still. Lucky this album only goes for almost 36 minutes because it feels like it goes for an hour.

Another solid effort from these guys who always manage to paint the seas, the land, the days and the night in a bleak and disturbed way. A world so dark.

Ikil