ALBUM REVIEW: Monasteries – Ominous

An angel heaven sent, was this meant to be?

At its best, deathcore is an exploration of human expression brought to supernatural limits. At its worst, it can be like walking round a theme park’s haunted house, full of theatre kids on a sugar high, lit by office strip lights. The UK technical-deathcore act Monasteries are poster children for this dichotomy, much like their contemporaries Chelsea Grin, Distant, and Humanity’s Last Breath. They practice a constant dedication to extreme, fourth-wall-breaking metal heaviness, maximalist production, laser tight guitarwork, and intricate drumming. Ominous is their first LP and tests whether they can produce a compelling long-form narrative experience, as they’ve produced only EPs and singles up to this point.

Your typical Monasteries song is teeming with ideas and reprises very few of them, creating challenging puzzles that hint at strong prog influence. First track “Ominous (Enter)”’s Meshuggah-lite introduction is a bit rote, but the remainder is really strong: a beat switch a minute in sticks a satisfying groove, whispered vocals (“resurrecting the same question”) and tightly panned guitar lead a briefly soaring passage, and a solo-vocal break behests a winding outro. “Spiralled Icon” is a front to back tour de force full of tapping, peaking with the “smoke and mirrors” groove segment in the middle, and choking its own tempo in the outro. Another brief but catchy moment is “Orphan Halls”’ “don’t forgive your father”, sliding its tempo upwards gradually. Unfortunately “Fatal Design” became a hard skip for me due to its extremely corny synth-inspired riff. Sometimes a “stupid” riff is actually stupid, and it just gets worse as it’s reprised (not to mention the whole thing appears again as a bonus track).

Most of the already released singles come in the final stretch. The best of these is “Heaven Failed Us”, featuring clean vocals that the band mostly avoided up to this point. I’m not sure why, as Josh Davies’ vocals can be angelic when required. “Lilac” was a solid blackened single that takes me back to early Abigail Williams. Although it’s listed as a bonus track, its spectacularly nasty breakdown makes for an excellent end to the record, and is my preferred place to finish the proceedings. Bonus tracks aside, “Ominous (Exit)” also makes for a solid finale for the album, and has a much better synth-driven intro riff showing that “Fatal Design” is just a blip.

The production is ultra-glossy with no detail left astray. The guitars avoid a fully “djent” sound which, in God’s year of 2023, makes them sound more unique rather than less. A particular effect that works well (and is not overused) are these reverse rises into snare hits, making them feel like a sledgehammer to the lung. The stereo panned guitars and layered vocals are perhaps a little too perfect at times, and the record might feel more down to earth, but at least the incredible vocal performances have a huge amount of detail.

Ominous is not a record that will convince battle jacket-eers (or even casual listeners) to take deathcore seriously, but it’s certainly a solid album within that realm. Although it has plenty of individually strong moments worth celebrating, the album’s lack of inventive structure and variety is a missed opportunity. As a result, Monasteries still feels like a “single-oriented” band, with each song on Ominous being so detailed and non-linear that a rush of twelve of them is too much to fathom without more hooks or dynamics. I hope the band uses this record as a closing chapter for their current era, and that they think hard about where they could take their style (and as a result, modern deathcore) in the future.

6/10

Ominous releases on the 25th August through Seek & Strike. You can order the record here (UK).