Monuments! I have been following the history of these guys since the early days of the Djent movement when Browne and Misha from Periphery shared their ideas and grooves on the web. In fact, Browne played in Periphery for a while when Alex Bois left. The Periphery connection gets even more incestuous with Chris Barretto, who sings here, was the original Periphery vocalist before Spence. It seems as though Misha was right about him being awkward to work with as he is no longer the Monuments vocalist either.
Anyhoo, things kick off nicely with A.W.O.L with some heavy drop D and beyond grooves from Browne and Olly Steele. Barretto’s vocal style flips from really melodic cleans to outright screamo. Stygian Blue opens up Side 2 – brilliant – and carries on with more low end grooves interspersed with melody and screams from Barretto. Album closer The Watch is the stand out cut from the album, and sees the band going out with all guns blazing.
Even though Monuments were one of the early purveyors of the djent movement, they seemed to get left behind as they were late to release product. Whereas other bands in this genre have been changing and varying their sounds, Monuments have been true to their sound and progressed over the 3 albums. Phronesis being their best effort to date. Hopefully they carry on as they have had quite a bit of turmoil with band members leaving or getting injured. I think they are a real good band.
7/10 from The Grooveman.
