Terrorfront: Album of the Month – May Edition

I am going to do something a bit different for the month of May. For those of you who are familiar with my “Terrorfront: Top 5” column know that I do top 5 favorite new (or new-ish) releases of every month. I am always active on the music front, so there is no shortage of that here, but there is one release in particular which I have only most recently gotten around to giving a proper listening to, and I feel that it is definitely one of the larger highlights in the doom metal community which has been missed or unheard of by (one too) many. And this is where I come in to introduce and promote the hell out of Belgium-based funeral doom metal band Monads.

Monads released their first demo Intellectus Iudicat Veritatem in September 2011, although it did not gain as much attention as it rightfully deserved at the time being a self-release (at least outside of Europe), Monads was able to reach out to more listeners and gain more of a following after frontman R. Polon’s appearance at Lifelover’s tribute shows to the passing of their founding member Jonas “B” Bergqvist back in Fall 2011. Although the performances consisted of members of Lifelover, Hypothermia, Trancelike Void & Monads all performing separate instruments and roles for the ceremonies, R. Polon’s intense vocal performance striked a chord of interest to spectators and assisted in the promotion of Monads’ first release to Lifelover fans and fans along the spectrum of similar musical projects. Intellectus is a well-crafted, depressingly beautiful 54 minute funeral doom demo which in itself outshines most “first demo” releases for new bands kicking off their musical career. I was quite surprised to see that this was not released as a full-length. Production-wise, everything falls into place quite nicely and in comparison ranks up to bands with similar audio structures and sounds such as U.S. funeral doom pioneers Loss and Mournful Congregation from Australia. With that said, there is definitely some influence from one or either of both projects eminent in Monads’ song structures – the haunting and solemn guitar solos which work their way into each song is enough to send chills down one’s spine, followed by being utterly crushed beneath the weight of heavy, crunching guitar tones and patterns of pounding funeral drums once more. Although Monads does not fall into the category of a “traditional” funeral doom band per say (I have seen on several other sources that their sound falls under the category of post-doom although I’m not quite familiar with the term) there are certainly elements of other personal influences on each members behalf, seeing as guitarist H. Cools has previous background work in projects such as Trancelike Void which falls under the category of depressive black metal. These minor elements and different sub-genre of musical backgrounds have influenced a positive effect on the structure of Monads and what they have to offer on the table which is exceptionally striking as a first debut.

Monads – “Absent As In These Veins”

Currently, the band still remains unsigned and are releasing their material independently. Labels and distro owners, take note of this.

http://www.facebook.com/monadsofdoom
monadsofdoom@gmail.com

Over and out,
Tracy / www.t-terrorphoto.com