Monolith Deathcult, The: Tetragrammaton

There's two ways to listen to this album, neither of which are very engaging. On the one hand, this is a very heavy and brutal death metal album, complete with powerful riffs, wind-up clock drumming and extreme vocals. There are also tons of samples drawn from movies to add plenty of thematic dash to things. I especially liked the bits taken from Independence Day, that fun alien invasion blockbuster from the 90s. The music on this album really isn't bad, but there's too much of it. The songs are too long and the ideas are too limited.

On the other hand, this album explores, with the strongest irony, the way death metal albums generally operate. In other words, there's a certain joke built in to this album, one that wants to understand the inner workings of death metal itself—the sound, the politics, the overly-long song titles, everything. Although I agree that death metal takes itself far too seriously, I don't know that this album is the response to it that listeners have been looking for. The problem with irony like this is that listeners already need to be in on the joke in order to understand it. The Monolith Deathcult can joke all they want—as for me, though, this brand of self-reflexive irony just isn't all that interesting. I'd rather just listen to good metal.

Track Listing:
1. Gods Among Insects
2. Human Wave Attack
3. Drugs, Thugs, and Machetes
4. Todesnacht von Stammheim
5. S.A.D.M.
6. Qasr Al-Nihaya
7. Aslimu!!! All Slain Those Who Bring Down Our Highly Respected Symbols to the Lower Status of the Barren Earth

Added: July 8th 2013
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 3338
Language: english

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