There's an old joke that doom metal bands only need to be inspired by Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath. Taking this idea to heart is Sweden's Monolord, whose fourth LP No Comfort finds inspiration in all the right places — Pentagram, Candlemass and, of course, the mighty Sabbath.
It's always fair to ask if a band adds anything new. No Comfort starts off fairly generic with "The Bastard Son," until the song dives into clean tone experimental territory around the five-minute mark. It's a trick Monolord repeat on "Larvae" (which sounds like something Baroness wish they had made), and on the 11-minute title track. But the rest of the album, and most of the previously mentioned songs, are happy to run over formulas that were perfected decades ago. There's nothing inherently wrong with a song like "Skywards," expect that it's nothing you didn't hear in the decade after Electric Wizard re-defined the genre with Dopethrone.
Beside the cinematic album highlight "Alone Together," which drifts through a woozy psychedelic haze of reverb, it's hard not to think that Monolord can do better. All the pieces are there; they just need to get the mix right.
(Relapse)It's always fair to ask if a band adds anything new. No Comfort starts off fairly generic with "The Bastard Son," until the song dives into clean tone experimental territory around the five-minute mark. It's a trick Monolord repeat on "Larvae" (which sounds like something Baroness wish they had made), and on the 11-minute title track. But the rest of the album, and most of the previously mentioned songs, are happy to run over formulas that were perfected decades ago. There's nothing inherently wrong with a song like "Skywards," expect that it's nothing you didn't hear in the decade after Electric Wizard re-defined the genre with Dopethrone.
Beside the cinematic album highlight "Alone Together," which drifts through a woozy psychedelic haze of reverb, it's hard not to think that Monolord can do better. All the pieces are there; they just need to get the mix right.