By the release of their fourth album, Rust, Monolord has well defined their sound. You could thus say this record sounds very Monolordy…or Monolordian? With that said, they do switch it up on a couple of tracks…
“The Bastard Son” kicks off this six-song, 48-minute effort in true Monolordian fashion, with a slithering stoner-doom riff and the requisite soaring, upper register vocal. At just a few ticks shy of 10 minutes, they give you plenty of time to burn one, too. The steady, heavy chug of “The Last Leaf” wouldn’t sound outta place on Windhand’s latest, while the mellow intro of “Larvae” leads into a melodic, melancholic doom metal march a la Warning or Pallbearer, again clocking in just shy of the 10-minute mark.
“Skywards” is vintage Monolord, a seven-minute, mid-tempo number that’ll get yer noggin noddin’, but the fifth track, “Alone Together Forever Divided” throws us for a loop with its clean, acoustic guitar and post-rock leanings – the vocals don’t kick in for over 90 seconds. Though it’s a shade over five minutes, you could almost call it an interlude.
The 11-minute title track ends things on a mellower note. This one also takes a little longer to get going, and rides along the same melodic lines as “Larvae,” although this one is even lighter, its verses sparse and vocal-driven. You could say that No Comfort goes out with a slow, longing whisper, rather than a bang.
(Relapse Records)
