MONNO - error
(CD, conspiracy)
I was afraid of listening to this record, I really was.
The first Monno
album “candlelight technology” was like having a new asshole ripped
and enjoying it. An experience not easily forgotten and praised ever
since. When I heard a new record by Monno was on the way, I knew it was
going to be even worse, which, of course, means good. As in serial killer
movie from the Sixties. As in dragster racing and waiting for the crash.
As in god has fucked with my life and now evertime I buy canned soup it is
rotten. As in do you want to come home with me and listen to Wolf Eyes
while I get all romantic on you. As in I dare you to eat a dozen cans of
vanilla joghurt, you wuss. As in makes the Butthole Surfers sound like a
teenie pop boy group. That kind of good.
Rereading what I wrote about “candlelight
technology” it still rings true. Monno might, by all means, be even more
upfront and destructive as before, while the subtleties have been thrown
out of the window. They use the first bunch of tracks to beat the listener
to pulp, banging vocals around his ears that have mutated to wailing
screeches by distortion, trashing you with hyperspeed and then stomping
you with a steady moving bass beat. Next of they get some real noise
going. Bass, interferenc chaos noise. Or as the info on their website has
it: “… a mix of heavy rock, free jazz and electronic textures.” Yeah
right. And Jimi Hendrix is a blues guitarist while Evil Knivel drives a
motorbike.
Half of the songs on “error” were recorded live in
Lubljana, which must have been quite a show. One that shook the walls and
made listeners bang their heads until they crumbled in agony. With a
saxophone blowing through guitar amps and distortion the impact must be
agonizingly painful and cathartically beautiful as well. They do take the
volume back in some places, especially the slowly unfolding “Graue
Masse” (translated as grey mass, another word for the mass of people who
rol with the punches and never get up to do their own thing, so they are
constantly being fucked over, enslaved to a live of consumerism both by
spending their money and workforce.) but that is soon done over with by
injecting some heavy concrete monsterbricks of noise during the next
track.
The magical power of the riff nevertheless does have
its power on them. No matter what the free jazz and avantgarde background,
there is something special and gripping about heavy drums and deep
distorted bass playing in unison, pounding out a grove filled with power
and energy and testosteron. Like on the album’s most accessible track
“pourri”, the one track to get the hardcore kids dancing, I guess.
Monno definitely mark their unique place amongst all
those bands currently so fashionable for mixing noise with heavy rock that
works itself into dark droning heaviness, such as Sunn0))) or Earth, or
that do the earpiercing sonic explosion thing like Wolf Eyes or Lightning Bolt.
I am slowly starting to wonder where the hype around these bands come
from. They are hard to swallow and ugly to taste, but their effect is
enjoyable and gratifying. Maybe because like industrial in the early
Eighties and Japan Noise some ten years later, their approach
subconsciously reflects the feeling most people have towards the world we
live in: a rotten, destructive and destroying place.
On the other hand bands like Bulbul – who
are in some ways comparable, especially when they plan to play a rock show
– and Monno have been around for how many years? Why would they get
famous all of a sudden now? (Yes, I know, Earth have been around even
before Nirvana, whatever.) Well, I wish them all the best.
