MONUMENTS: In Stasis (METALCORE,Djent): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Monuments has been around for 15 years and seems to be searching for itself since the beginning. And it is not the incessant line-up changes that have helped things. It's quite simple, the band has exhausted no less than five singers in a decade, for various reasons. With this fourth album, "In Stasis", the English still hesitate between djent and metalcore, only managing to synthesize the two styles at rare moments. But the good news is that they found a really impressive singer in the person of Andy Cisek.

Indeed, if there is something new in Monuments' music, it is the vocal prowess of its new frontman that should be sought. As much at ease in clear as in screamed vocals, and passing from one to the other with a disconcerting ease ('Opiate', 'Collapse'), he even goes as far as to completely overshadow the performance of Spencer Sotelo, the singer of Periphery invited on the track 'Arch Essence'. And above all, it allows Monuments to find a more marked and solid identity than on its previous album, "Phronesis". It is notably the case on the excellent 'Cardinal Red', 'False Providence' and 'The Cimmerian', where the band really assumes its powerful djentcore, even going as far as integrating some atmospheric passages inherited from its main model, Tesseract.

But even if this reference remains the major influence of Monuments, the band still struggles to make the synthesis between djent and metalcore, so much so that it flirts more than once with the clichés of each of the genres, in particular the alternations between clear and screamed vocals which are far too predictable and the riffs which do not always shine by their originality ('No One Will Teach You', 'Somnus', 'Makeshift Harmony'). The result is an inevitable feeling of weariness halfway through the album, a feeling reinforced by the rather similar structures from one track to another, despite the often catchy choruses.

Nevertheless, the musical identity of Monuments tends to assert itself a little more with this very dense "In Stasis". Let's hope that a more stable line-up in the future will allow the English to deepen the ideas they only touch upon on this album and give them the opportunity to become the modern djentcore reference band they aspire to be. - Official website

MONUMENTS

IN STASIS

CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS

METALCORE