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"We're not going to hold back from discovering your new
favourite band. Behold! Monolord."
Decibel Magazine
“Remember that time you drove your battered old VW out into
the woods, took an unfeasible amount of peyote and listened to nothing but
Sleep, Ufomammut and YOB for four days straight? No? Well, this is going to
trigger one hell of a flashback.”
Terrorizer
“No shit guitar solos, no questionable vocals, just
relentlessly heavy riffs generated by this newly formed monolithic Swedish
trio. Love their name, sound and heavyweight approach.”
The Bug
In 2013, Monolord first emerged from their native Gothenburg, Sweden
behind an impenetrable wall of distortion and spellbinding vocals. The outside
world took notice in a big way as the trio of Thomas V Jäger (vocals, guitars),
Esben Williams (drums), and Mika Häkki (bass) garnered a flurry critical
acclaim for their RidingEasy Records debut, Empress Rising, a year later.
Decibel Magazine decreed them, “Your new favourite band,”
New Noise Magazine called the album, “Fantastic,” and This Is Not A Scene
announced, “The power they capture speaks for itself,” as they became mainstays
on the top of Bandcamp’s Doom chart. However, Monolord’s sophomore set Vænir
opens up the gateway into their world wider.
“From day one, it’s always been our aim to build a massive
wall of rumbling sound,” declares Thomas. “That’s our common goal. We’re the
exact opposite of a band consisting of members with identical record
collections. We come from three fairly different places, but we’re all drawn to
dark, heavy, and gritty music. What we do in Monolord is the result of that
creative conflict between us. That’s conflict in the word’s positive sense.”
Within that push-and-pull of aesthetic, the three-piece
found the framework for Vænir. Shortly after the release of Empress Rising, the
group returned to their tiny rehearsal space to cut and personally produce the
album’s six tracks with Esben mixing and mastering.
Opener ‘Cursing the One’ trudges from a calculated,
staggered groove into a guttural drowning choir of hauntingly hypnotic vocals.
‘We Will Burn’ tempers the slow burn with incendiary melody, while the
ten-minute-plus ‘Died A Million Times’ swings the pendulum between that growl
of distortion and a clean guitar. The penultimate reprieve on ‘The Cosmic
Silence’ gives way to an expansive finale dirge with the title track.
“That title comes from the ancient name of Sweden’s
largest lake,” Thomas reveals. “The lyrics are about unspeakable things
happening at the lake during the night, which fits well with the mood of the
entire album. It’s that cold, dark, and final embrace of a vast lake.”
Throughout, Thomas lyrically explores the dark core of
humanity. “Misanthropy is an ever-present theme in everything we do,” he goes
on. “The disgust for what humans do to each other and to the planet is
constant. Religion, greed, and power madness run through humanity like
incurable diseases, which is, consequentially, a constant stream of inspiration
for us.”
Ultimately, Monolord offers shelter from some of that
darkness. “I hope we can be an outlet to the massive and destructive stupidity
surrounding us all,” Thomas concludes. “This band is our safety valve. We hope
the same goes for our fans.”
Vænir by Monolord will be released on 28th April 2015 via
RidingEasy Records.
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