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Mono, "Hymn to the Immortal Wind"
If I didn't know better, I would swear that Mono hail from Viking territory. Their latest full length conjures up scenes of great Norse ships sailing through the fog past coastal villages that have been set ablaze.
As the opening track "Ashes in the Snow" creeps up to a roar, I can picture the aftermath of a great, bloody battle between frost giants and viking hordes spilled out across whitecapped mountains. Mono provide the perfect soundtrack for trudging through the battlefield to reclaim the bodies of the fallen. "Burial at Sea" laments the loss of a hardened old leader as his funeral pyre drifts out into the icy North Sea. As an orchestra accompanies Mono's swelling, grinding guitars, I can map out all of the scenes in an epic viking film, replete with slow motion crane shots of blacksmiths forging swords and women seeing their men off to battle.
"Pure as Snow (Trails of the Winter Storm)" starts off slowly and quietly like so many Mono songs do, but it eventually betrays its title by venturing into near psychadelic screeching and roaring noise that suggests a storm that is anything but pure. Mono put their orchestral accompaniment to great use on songs like "Everlasting Light," which closes the album out with a grand and triumphant noise. The record has an arc that begins with loss and turmoil and ends with cathartic renewal.
It's too easy to fall into the trap of simply calling Mono's music "cinematic," so while enjoying it on repeated listens, I decided to figure out exactly which movie it is that their music evokes. Though it may give away my own cultural bias, I couldn't get the idea of viking kings and wintery beasts out of my head. So with those visions, I played the record over and found that it remarkably took on a distinct life in Mono's repertoire. It's easy also to listen to any Mono record casually and to enjoy it even, without necessarily placing it. The band has been mining the same basic formula and the same set of song dynamics for years, and a quick skim through Hymn to the Immportal Wind doesn't reveal anything that particularly strays from that. Most of the songs build from quiet to loud to louder to LOUDER still, and I find that comforting—Mono with an 808 drum machine or jazzy backbeat wouldn't be as riveting. However, Hymn to the Immortal Wind may be Mono's most singluarly narrative album.
I think it's hard for people who don't follow music like this with some devotion to tell the difference from one album to the next, or in some cases, from one band to the next. With that in mind, think of this one as "The Viking Album." May it inspire someone to direct an epic film worthy of this record as its soundtrack.
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