Album Review: Monolord – Your Time To Shine

The Breakdown

A powerful return for the band and an album that sees them turn on the best of their sound, making every note and every cymbal crash matter. One of the finest doom albums of the year.

– 8.8

Swedish power trio Monolord return with new album, ‘Your Time to Shine’. Recorded by Monolord drummer Esben Willems at Studio Berserk, the album sees the trio looking inward, cultivating the elements that take their monstrous, heavy riffing to new heights with a darker edge.

“To me, an honest representation of how I feel about the current state of humanity,” Esben offers, while
Thomas leaves a very curious appraisal in the air: “To me it does not feel heavier. It feels more complete.” As with all the best albums, Your Time To Shine will end up meaning a lot of things to a lot of people. So maybe just keep in mind Thomas’ wise summing up: that “it sounds like Monolord, only better.”

Heavy, repetitive goodness in spades the album opens with track ‘The Weary’. A punishing intro gives way to a lonely guitar grinding out the main riff. The band join in and its all systems go for another cracker of an album by Monolord. These guys manage to dig up awesome riffs from out of no way and tweak them so they are as heavy as can be yet still very listenable.

‘To Each Their Own’ sees the band take on some lighter sounding moments as they keep the track simple with just guitar and vocals. The chorus is beefed up but the track sees the band breathing more. You could almost hear a country vibe in the picked guitar notes. The band do create a classic doom riff with the long held distorted notes that is classic Monolord.

‘I’ll Be Damned’ is the monster track of the album. A mammoth sized riff that vibrates with menace and some of the finest drumming on the album from Willems, who’s tight manic drumming is nothing short of epic. Something that could be said the same for the guitar work from Thomas V Jäger. More of this please guys.

Title track ‘Your Time To Shine’ is an emotive powerhouse of guitar lead work and ballad style songwriting wrapped up in that unique Monolord doom. Moments of beauty mixed in with classic Monolord doom, sees these guys bring an exciting addition to the genre. The beauty continues with final track ‘The Siren Of Yersinia’, a brooding intense track that morphs into an epic doom laden masterpiece. From the quiet and beautifully written beginning the track has everything the band can throw at it and ends the album on a high.

A powerful return for the band and an album that sees them turn on the best of their sound, making every note and every cymbal crash matter. One of the finest doom albums of the year, there is no missing the bands creative powers yet still keeping the album firmly in the doom genre. The bend and blur the lines creating moments of beauty and heart wrenching passages yet still very much keeping the heavy doom laden riffs that we love them for.

Check out the opening track, below: