Monuments at TECH FEST

MONUMENTS, a name that has come to the forefront of Tech and Djent sub cultures in what seems like the blink of an eye. Their groove too great for mere mortals, their thall too thunderous for puny ears and their vocals too complex for the normal mind. They are the progressive metal and experimental groove that is legendary. The 5 piece formed in 2010 – originally a side project of guitarist John Brown. Releasing their first full length, ‘Gnosis’ in August 2012 the band built up a massive following. In March 2013 however, original vocalist Matt Rose parted ways with the band. Which lead to current vocalist Chris Barretto taking the stage, and the completion of the bands second full length album, ‘The Amanuensis’ which was released June 2014. Leaving the line up as Chris Barretto on vocals, John Browne and Olly Steele on guitars, Adam Swan on bass and Mike Malyan on drums. RAMzine spoke to Chris and Adam (a.k.a “Swanny”) about the new line up and how it affected the writing process of the new album.

“Obviously writing an album requires a lot of team work and reflecting/bouncing off each others ideas. When you get used to writing with someone and then you change that person, it can affect the balance”.

Chris and Adam gave us the lowdown! – with having little time to write the album, the band was tested on how fast they could write an album and to what quality it could be written. As we all know, the quality was perfect and the album is one of the best of 2014, if not the best so far! With the line up changing, a lot of the album had been written already, so it came down to Chris singing over the top of the instrumental tracks, and giving feedback on the songs requesting extra sections or breaks within the song to make them flow better. Then it came down to Browne and Chris working together, writing lyrics to riffs from Browne and Swanny helping out with arrangements. Malyan writing the drums to the songs and Olly throwing riffs in.

With the success of ‘The Amanuensis’ whats the future of MONUMENTS? Chris replied “Tour the shit out of this album”, which is always good to hear with such a solid album! “Then start writing new stuff I guess!” he added, which I am particularly excited about. And in the long run? “Man, 5 years from now I’d just love to be main staging Download”. We think its easily doable, and would love to see them headline!

So, what personally influences these guys? What feeds into their imagination, which spews out musical genius? Swanny himself said “I listen to a lot of hip hop and I’ve been through stages of listening to a lot of funk, soul and jazz.”. Chris’ range from recent influences such as Freddy Mercury, to classics like Michael Jackson, Soundgarden and then a lot of Classical musical. The bands musical pallet is ever changing and very different to what some might expect, the typical answers of Meshuggah and Sikth are in there but on an individual level the guys all have very different tastes. We asked if you could only listen to one album for the rest of eternity what would it be? To which Swanny says ‘Morning View’ by Incubus.

After their Saturday headline at TECH FEST the band jet out to the US to keep touring ‘The Amanuensis’ over a month and half, have a little bit of R&R, then play a few headline shows in the states. Then its back over to Europe to tour with AFTER THE BURIAL and DEAD LETTER CIRCUS, then over to Russia later in the year!