With a touch of Khanate's avant-doom, spliced with the sepulchral grind of Corrupted, Monarch's sound is familiar yet idiosyncratic. Crushing tonalities, lugubrious riffs and screeds of distortion are commonplace features from the mutated doom genre, yet where many bands utilize those elements to pound their audiences into submission, Monarch go about things very differently. By sporadically liberating their monolithic might, the band mesmerizes, terrifies and then, when you're all but exhausted and they're good and ready, asphyxiates.
Recorded in four different countries with four different producers, you might reasonably expect the three tracks that comprise Omens to sound somewhat disjointed. They don't. Guitarist Shiran Kaïdine, bassist MicHell Bidegain and vocalist Emilie Bresson do well to maintain the eldritch atmospheres throughout. This was no doubt helped by the preternaturally gifted Sanford Parker, who mixed the album. Also featured are a host of guest artists, along with the percussive versatility of brand new member, Dark Castle drummer Rob Shaffer.
While Omens is not substantially different from Monarch's five previous full-lengths — it still mines that slow-baked fire-and-brimstone impishness —there is a thread of minimalism and murky ambiance to the album, illustrating a refinement of the band's aesthetic. "Blood Seeress", for example, trawls through its lumbering dirge-like 12 minutes with the band's usual lachrymose and cloudy finish; yet somehow it remains inviting, as if the band have discovered some hitherto hidden ability to circumvent their challenging persona.
Much of the credit for this alluring nature must go to Kaïdine, Bidegain and Shaffer. The mix of über-slow riffs and molasses-thick bass sounds more amiable on Omens. Shaffer nails the downtempo crawl perfectly, his measured fills adding plenty of welcoming textures. That's not to suggest the music is somehow 'lighter', but the warmer production certainly allows you to fathom the depth and nuances of the doomscapes more easily. This lends a certain magnetism to the album that encourages you to lean in further, adding to a richer appreciation of the band's work, and of Bresson's spectral vocals.
The one feature that has always set Monarch apart from the abhorren- doom pack is Bresson's voice. Or, more accurately, her many voices, as her ethereal lamentations are frequently layered and treated with noisome effects. Faint hints of screams, howls and torturous shrieks are all unleashed, often within in the same song.
On Omens, her work is as hypnotizing as ever, but it is more restrained; less of the screech, more of a despondent sigh. The whispered, semi-obscured susurrations on "Black Becomes the Sun" rise from the mire with genuinely creepy resolve, and on the elliptical ambient mid-track "Transylvanian Incantations" they are phantasmal—gliding past, sending shivers up the spine.
Monarch sustains an unearthly, ritualistic atmosphere throughout Omens. At only 34 minutes long it doesn't overstay its welcome, and it genuinely exemplifies some of the best aspects of the band's current oeuvre. Although the album is less foreboding than previous releases, it is still an unsettlingly nefarious work. The amorphous waves of darkened sounds that Monarch deals in spawn unnerving undercurrents and auras. Through which the band expertly weaves tales of unease. Omens may be less threatening up front, but Monarch are still ably crafting the most tormenting of odes.
(released February, 28, 2012 on At A Loss Recordings)
