MONGE — Monge (review)

MONGE — Monge album cover Demo · 2013 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Vim Fuego
Holyfuckingshit!

THIS is the reason I listen to metal. Occasionally, just very occasionally, something is thrown at you which is so unexpected and so intense it reinvigorates your lust for metal. As a rule, I’d rather listen to a noisecore demo which sounds like someone has thrown a pizza on a turntable and then dropped the needle on it than to subject myself to almost anything from the black metal underground. Atmosphere is something to breathe not listen to, symphonies are best kept for orchestras, and the old gods are as praiseworthy as the tooth fairy.

And so I approached Monge’s self-titled demo with much trepidation, investigating only because it is a side project of Brazilian grindcore band Facada.

The acoustic intro “Descending into the Deepest Abyss of the Self and Deny the Creator of Lands and Seas” is pretty ho-hum. Silly title, competently performed, but nothing much to write home about.

But then, “The Doctrine of Transcendental Invocation” blasts out of the speakers, and “Monge” is transformed into something sublime. All preconceptions are instantly vaporised. This is red-meat-dripping-blood raw black metal, a direct descendant of early Bathory and Mayhem. As with all the best raw black metal, it has buzzsaw guitars, lightning fast drums, and throat shredding vocals. The five tracks following the intro stick strictly to this formula, but it is hardly formulaic, because it is so viciously, convincingly carried off.

The only time this formula seems to change even slightly is on “Summoning the Lords of Tragedies Storm”, which seems to veer more towards crust-tinged grind, punctuated with incredible black metal blasting, and fades out into the only atmospheric passage of the entire demo, a rumbling rainstorm.

The cover of Rotting Christ’s “The Signal of the Evil Existence” is the coup de grace. The song is a perfect choice, made all the more so as the Greek gothic black metal masters began their humble existence as a grindcore band. Monge make it their own.

These three grind freaks could teach even the most frostbitten and grim tr00 kvlt high priest of black metal that the darkness and evil can still return without the extra-curricular fuckwittery of church burning, murder, and National Socialism. This is truly inspiring, violent extreme metal.
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