With bands pilfering from every metal genre through the ages these days, it’s becoming harder to confidently pigeon-hole them but, what the hell, I’m going for it anyway. Cosmic progressive thrash. There, I’ve done it. I’ve slotted Monsterworks into their very own, brand new, pigeon-hole of one. Who ever said that labels in music were unhelpful and too often relied upon? The term sums this band up perfectly. Thrash – because that is the main ‘metal’ component of Monsterworks. Progressive because it often feels like a non-linear experience that doesn’t rely on typical song structures and happily pushes a few boundaries; and ‘cosmic’ because it features regular, drifting, semi acoustic interludes that fit perfectly with the bands lyrical and visual themes conjured up by the band. And that is only a stab at summing up their main influences because Monsterworks clearly aren’t the sort of band that is happy being confined by boundaries.
Taking just one example, Kiwi singer and guitarist Jono Blade’s vocals range from an impressive, low, death-metal growl, to a Rob Halford-style scream and then, as we enter those drifting passages, all the way into something I can only describe as ‘a bit Simon and Garfunkel’. Universe is an enjoyable, interesting album of the cunningly addictive variety that works as a whole so much more than it does when considered through the sum of its parts. The great thing about Monsterworks is that they do their genre mashing brand of metal so effortlessly and have been doing so with increasingly regularity. I managed to catch last year’s Earth album and this is the follow up, arriving hot on its heels just seven months later and with an even grander lyrical vision.
Universe sees them continuing to hone their sound into a kind of sprawling, rock-cum-thrash soundscape and with more emphasis on the heavier, distorted end of that than the drifting lead guitars and keyboards. The result is a pretty big sound. So much so that I figured, with them coming from New Zealand, I might have missed something here and that these guys are playing festivals on the other side of the world somewhere – it has that kind of epic, stadium-filling quality and delivered with a level of confidence that sounds like it has been hard earned. But apparently they’re based in London and firmly rooted in the underground even after nine albums in. Monsterworks is a decent band with respectable amounts of flair and originality and both Earth and Universe are well worth a listen.
I guess I have to say I couldn’t shake the fact that there are a few bands around doing similar things to this and I couldn’t get Devin Townsend out of my mind as a reasonable ball-park comparison to Monsterworks – perhaps at the slightly more accessible end of his output. But Monsterworks do what they do very well even though it never for me quite hits the heights that the vision of their music is aiming to reach.
(7/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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