Monno
鬼魂

Released through the Belgian record-label Conspiracy in 2008, “Ghosts” is the fourth official album by the Switzerland born (in 1999) and Germany based (since 2002) Experimental-Doom-Metal outfit, MONNO. It features 5 tracks, varying in length from 3 up to 14 minutes, and clocking in at over 45 minutes in total. There is no guitarist in the line-up – all noises are created with tenor sax, voice, laptop, bass and drums. So, as you might guess, it’s not your melodic and riffy traditional Doom, but rather experimental and avant-gardish Doom-mess. The quartet is able to demonstrate a certain variety from track to track on the album, stylistically ranging their path from steady, repetitive, and droney Doom-Metal (“Negative Horizon”) to impulsive, chaotic, and uncompromising Noise-core (“Hull”). However, there are too little progressions, shifts and turns within a single composition. The music is mostly instrumental – voice and sax are used as additional instruments for developing sound-textures but not for compositional or melodic constructing. Honestly, I expected more from MONNO on “Ghosts”, which considered to be their best record to date. However, fans of repetitive, moody, and doomy-metallic experimentations will appreciate it for sure.