One week from today, on Sept. 16, Dutch progressive heavy rockers Monomyth will release their self-titled debut LP on Burning World Records. The album (review here) is rife with patient builds, playing off synth and programming textures from Peter van der Meer and Tjerk Stoop while the alternately ambient and crunch-riffing guitars of Thomas van den Reydt run wild over the steady foundations of bassist Selwyn Slop and drummer Sander Evers. Melody is constant, the mood is progressive and contemplative, but celebratory, and whether they’re rooted in a plotted-seeming jam or spacing out into parts unknown, Monomyth retain their sense of control across the span of the album’s five extended tracks without sacrificing a feeling of vitality or ever losing sight of their overall purpose. It’s an impressive debut.

Evers‘ tenure in 35007, who worked off some of the same ideas but ultimately in a much different way — still instrumental heavy prog, but theirs was more rooted specifically in stoner rock than the new Den Haag five-piece comes off as being — should lend the band notoriety to anyone who may have heard that act. A sort of dog-whistle for the familiar. But Monomyth are quick to show a personality of their own, and ultimately come out having more in common with the smooth productions of My Sleeping Karma than Evers‘ prior outfit, and opening cut “Vanderwaalskrachten” goes a long way in showing why. A slow, atmospheric start leads to a gradual build not comprised of predictable changes from measure to measure but of an overarching progression — more the tide coming in than a dam being breached — and though there’s a moment when it “takes off,” it does so naturally, giving up none of the fluidity established earlier on as it continues to solidify around a potent, engaging groove.

And don’t be fooled, because when you think “Vanderwaalskrachten” — its Dutch name referring to the bonds between electrons and what attracts one charge to another, positive and negative — has hit its peak, that’s still yet to come. Keys step to the fore in jazz fusion style but a cacophony of hits and wailing leads ensues, and Monomyth cap the 11:41 track with circumstance enough to make the beginning of their first record among its most righteous highlights.

With thanks to the band and Burning World Records, I have the pleasure today of featuring “Vanderwaalskrachten” for streaming ahead of the release next week. Please check it out on the player below and enjoy:

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Monomyth‘s Monomyth is due out Sept. 16, 2013 on Burning World Records. More info at the links below:

Although at its most expansive, Monomyth‘s Monomyth ranges well into a cosmos of Krautrock-infused progadelia, there isn’t one moment of the album that feels like happenstance. Rather, the den Haag instrumental five-piece put an immediate sense of purpose into their Burning World Records self-titled debut — which is bound as well to grab extra attention owing to the involvement of drummer Sander Evers, formerly of Dutch heavy psych groundbreakers 35007 — and each of the five extended cuts on the 57-minute outing offers a complete individual journey while also flowing directly one to the next, so that the whole of the album is built up around these at times breathtakingly cohesive parts. The exception to that rule of flow is the 17-minute closer, “Huygens,” which comes on following silence at the end of the penultimate “Loch Ness,” but even that seems to have been a conscious decision on the part of the band — Evers on drums, Selwyn Slop on bass, Thomas van den Reydt on guitar, Peter van der Meer on keys and Tjerk Stoop credited with “synthesis and processing” in the album’s liner, which I assume means laptop — and certainly “Huygens” doesn’t detract from the overall liquidity of Monomyth for its slow fade in from the aforementioned silence, only adding to it a grand payoff patiently built toward that justifies the song’s position as the finale without losing sight of the progressive vibe. One could spend a lifetime immersed in the heavy prog spectrum of the early and mid ’70s, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that one or more of the members of Monomyth has, but in truly progressive form, the production here is modern-sounding to its very core. Modern-sounding, but not over-produced, it’s worth pointing out, and Monomyth walk just as careful a line in their presentation of their self-titled as they do in the intricate sense of composition and technicality that rests at the core of “Vanderwaalskrachten” (11:26), “Vile Vortices” (8:28), “The Groom Lake Engine” (10:06), “Loch Ness” (10:24) and “Huygens” (17:04) — all the titles coming together to blend into a theme of something unknown, scientific and otherworldly.

Whichever came first, those titles or the songs themselves, the pieces are clearly meant to be taken in a complete listen with how each feeds into the one following. Still, there doesn’t seem to be a narrative at work across them, or at least not in the sense of “Jack runs here, Jack goes there.” “Vanderwaalskrachten” begins with sparse guitar and synth hum, setting up a swirl and lushness of sound that will prove almost constant but for a few purposeful moments of minimalism. Setting a patient tone, the drums kick in around two minutes in with the bass and the dynamic at the core of Monomyth‘s Monomyth is established; the rhythm section holds pieces together so that the guitar, keys and other elements are free to explore, which they do, again, not without a pervasive sense of purpose. The initial impression is similar in its smoothness and moody underpinnings to Germany’s My Sleeping Karma, but as “Vanderwaalskrachten” — named for the attractions between molecules and intermolecular forces — hits a pre-midpoint peak of heavy guitar riffing later to reemerge as a kind of instrumental chorus, it’s that much clearer that the band haven’t yet played their entire hand. A solo follows topping space rock pulsations and carries into a quiet bridge marked out by some funky organ work, only to find that chorus return again late in the track, giving all the more an impression of structure. Actually, “Vanderwaalskrachten” winds up rather traditional at its heart, just presented in a much different form than a phrase like “verse/chorus structure” might conjure in the mind of the listener. Likewise careful not to get underway too quickly, “Vile Vortices” — aka the Devil’s Graveyards; the Bermuda Triangle, Indus Valley, Algerian Megaliths, et. al. — unfolds to Floydian leads punctuated by xylophone-sounding percussion given flourish by jazzy keys before bass and organ introduce the crux of the build, Evers holding steady on drums behind. Those leads return, but structurally, “Vile Vortices” is different from its predecessor, more linear, and after five minutes in, it breaks to introduce a heavier riff that acts as the foundation for the build over the remainder of the track, which rounds out with a drone leading right into “The Groom Lake Engine,” the  centerpiece of Monomyth.

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