Monolord - No Comfort
MONOLORD RELEASES POWERFUL ‘NO COMFORT’
Swedish doom outfit Monolord released their fourth album, No Comfort, just moments ago, via Relapse Records.
Monolord
Commenting on the album, drummer Esben Willems says, “Thomas wrote all lyrics, but I relate heavily to them, connecting them to my own life and what goes on in the world around us. Many of the lyrics also question the existence of religion and general hatred and ignorance spreading like a pandemic across the globe. Misanthropy is a constant theme in our conversations — it’s a struggle to not lose faith in humanity when the world is on fire and all we do is argue about how to put the fire out, or question if there even is a fire.”
On No Comfort, for the first time, the band relinquished control of the recording process, turning it over to Kim Gravander of Let Them Swing Studios, in Gothenburg. According to guitarist/vocalist Thomas Jäger, “It’s probably the best production we’ve had.”
Made up of Thomas Thomas Jäger (vocals, guitar), Esben Willems (drums), and Mika Häkki (bass), Monolord released their first album, Empress Rising, in 2014, followed by Vænir a year later, and Rust in 2017.
No Comfort encompasses six-tracks, beginning with “The Bastard Son,” opening on thick dirty riffs and crunching, almost syncopated drums, followed by the entry of a fat oblique bassline. Jäger’s voice, a piercing tenor, recalls Ozzy, just as Monolord’s sound evokes comparisons to Black Sabbath. And while such comparisons are valid on one level, on another level Monolord’s sludge-filled music exudes tendrils of mystical quixotic flavors absent from Sabbath, witnessed by the dense yet ethereal feel of the guitar-laden interlude about two-thirds of the way through “The Bastard Son,” which conjures up likeness to severely stripped-down Tool, in drop F tuning.
For all its cavernous depth, there’s a delicious nomadic melodicism streaming through this song.
“In the electric eye / Through storms he ride / The earth we walk upon / Is his alone / He’s the bastard son / He walks the earth / He’s already won / The bastard son.”
“The Last Leaf” rides steroid-enhanced hypertrophic grunge-flavored guitars, akin to Nirvana on Dianabol. “Larvae” features a delicate cerebral intro flowing into prog-rock-laced sludge metal of abyssal resonance. For all its cavernous depth, there’s a delicious nomadic melodicism streaming through this song.
“Skywards” rides a trundling, massive rhythmic pulse topped by condensed, sweltering viscous dynamics. Jäger’s searing guitar licks, along with his reedy, high-pitched tones infuse the tune with ferociously tight electrical surges of color.
The industrial, austere pulse of the intro on “Alone Together” establishes a wickedly dark tension, shadowed by a seamless transition to wafting, drifting momentum, almost palpable with dark resolves and solitary urgency. When the harmonics ramp up, the music assumes a vicious anger, barely under control.
The title track closes the album, traveling on elusively opaque riffs, initially. A wailing tone, akin to a squeal, introduces hefty guitar textures and a fluid bassline of gravitational aspect. The final segment of the song rumbles with Jovian reverberations, black and glutinous.
With No Comfort, Monolord commit to stirring music, exuding a psychic aura of lethal dread, subterranean, cryptic, and tumescent with vast emotions.
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