Monolord, Rust: Shimmer in Dirt

monolord rust

Over the course of the last four years, Gothenburg trio Monolord have worked efficiently on a mission to establish themselves among the heaviest of riff-driven bands the world over. Rust is their third album for RidingEasy Records behind the 2016 Lord of Suffering / Die in Haze EP (review here) and 2015’s Vænir (review here) and 2013’s debut Empress Rising full-lengths, and in some crucial ways it continues the thread. For example? It’s incredibly heavy. Should be said outright. Self-produced with drummer Esben Willems at the helm of Berserk Audio, it finds guitarist/vocalist Thomas V. Jäger, bassist Mika Häkki and Willems unfolding a molten cascade of riffy largesse worthy of the reputation they’ve earned from their studio output and corresponding significant time on tour. At the same time, however, it’s easier to read a narrative of progression within Monolord‘s sound even as the title-track lumbers into some of the record’s most weighted doom — the Swedish trio have grown melodically bolder, and Jäger‘s vocals, while still coated in effects, are more confident in their delivery than they were even two years ago.

As a unit, they were already on a progressive path coming from Empress Rising into Vænir, but the shift feels even more marked on Rust, particularly as it caps with its two longest inclusions, “Forgotten Lands” (12:45) and “At Niceae” (15:36), which seem to bring Monolord successively into new depths and new heights of places they’ve never explored before. While it’s not necessarily a shock that a band who’ve spent as much time on the road as Monolord have and who have two prior LPs under their collective belt would be coming into their own in terms of songwriting, the corresponding uptick of scope they present across Rust‘s 54 minutes isn’t to be understated, and as much heft as they offer, it’s the space they cover with it that impresses even more.

Naturally, when one hears the rumble that begins “Dear Lucifer” or the roll of “Where Death Meets the Sea,” the temptation is to think of Rust as a continuation of Monolord‘s seismic plod, but the truth is that by the first verse of “Where Death Meets the Sea,” which opens, they’re telling a more complex sonic story of where they are as a group. It would be an oversight to discount the vocal performance of Jäger in conveying this — almost immediately (there’s an intro to “Where Death Meets the Sea,” but we’re talking soon after that) he steps into a prominent frontman role in a way that simply wasn’t done on the last record or Empress Rising before it, and by setting that vibe early, he’s better able to maintain it even as the three-piece trudges later into the deep recesses of “Forgotten Lands” and “At Niceae.” But it’s not just his voice.

The guitar opens up to a subdued, almost airy tone during the verse, and while Häkki‘s bass adds plenty of oomph to the low end in the hook — yup, it’s a hook — as the five-plus-minute track unfolds, Monolord demonstrate an intention to do more than simply overwhelm with tonal weight. Though slower, “Dear Lucifer” ultimately does likewise, with the vocals out front of a progression that, while still about as post-Electric Wizard as the band get on Rust, is even more their own. Organ starts the title-track and provides a backdrop for the first minute, but recedes once the guitar, bass and drums kick in, bringing forth a densely-fuzzed march around a straightforward verse/chorus interchange that builds on what “Where Death Meets the Sea” accomplished with less back and forth interplay of volume, and a chugging second half bridge that, much to its credit, doesn’t veer into being overdone either before or after its last run through the hook en route to the ending guitar solo that brings about the instrumental “Wormland.”

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I’m not sure where the sides/platters split for Rust, but it’s fair either way to say that “Wormland” feels as much like an introduction leading the way into “Forgotten Lands” and “At Niceae” as it does a capstone for the three shorter cuts before it. The groove comes easily and is maintained likewise across the six-minute instrumental piece, and a hypnotic effect from the early repetition is given further breadth through the arrival of violin just after the four-minute mark. like the verse of “Where Death Meets the Sea” or the heavy psych vibing that the last two tracks will touch on, this is yet another moment on Rust where the breadth comes into direct focus, though admittedly, in the case of “Forgotten Lands,” the overarching impression is much more geared toward weight than reach. Still, even as they seem to plummet downward into this low-end mire, they complement with higher-register vocals from Jäger to give a more rounded feel. And as thoroughly doomed as Rust is, that turns out to be the story of the album.

“Forgotten Lands” and “At Niceae” invariably define much of it, in a way the extended “Died a Million Times” and “Vænir” did at the end of Vænir, but as those two were split by the two-minute “The Cosmic Silence,” the way Monolord thrust their listeners into this world feels more brazen, and even more so as “Forgotten Lands” dips into its post-midpoint tripout, anchored by the bass as the weedy guitar goes wandering around dreamy layered vocals. They come back around to crush again and cap just before the 12-minute mark, which leaves silence as a transition into “At Niceae,” which strums YOB-like at the outset but soon enough moves into its own thundering roll, finding a defining fuzzy moment right around eight minutes in as a setup for instrumental hypnosis that gives way at 13 minutes to pure Floydian acoustics.

Vocals return and so does a line of electric guitar that marks the fadeout, but by then the pivotal shift in impression has been made and Monolord have sent the last confirmation of the growth they’ve undertaken as a band, no less striking than the tonal onslaught with which they first made their mark on an international audience. Their narrative may in part always remain centered around that consuming sonic largesse, but if Rust proves anything about Monolord, it’s that they’re still just beginning to reveal their full potential.

Monolord, Rust (2017)

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