EXO

This seems to be my favourite MONOMYTH outing (so far). It looks like 'Exo' is showing more variety than ever in style and atmosphere. Yet the opener Uncharted delivers it all in consequence - a relaxed spacey warm-up to begin with, quite trance mooded, combined with a hypnotic krautrock beat. This will be dominant over the course, though inbetween they are also running into some more common stoner, heavily punching behaviour, they have a reputation for basically.

And further on Surface Crawler is spiked with Can and early Kraftwerk adapted relations, though without leaving the heavy rocking orientation in general - this is really amazing! Also, on ET Oasis guitar and synths are alternating when it comes to some solo turns. And then especially LHC appears with an enormous thrilling groove, very compact this time while nearly missing any soloing activity. Moebius Trip finally brings them back to spacey paths which rounds the album up in the end.

Best known from another rather successful Dutch band 35007, Sander Evers is the one leading this crew, spiritually and of course musically too, due to his powerful and precise drum work. Consisting of five instrumental heavy psych songs MONOMYTH from The Hague have put a new album to the table which is convincing me much. While featuring more krautish as well as spacey impressions they have refined their style again since the forerunner album 'Further' came out in 2014. Recommended!

MONOMYTH is one of my favourite Dutch bands releasing four studio albums so far with "Exo" being the third from 2016. A five piece who play space rock of the highest quality. As I've mentioned before the drummer is from the legendary band 35007. I still feel that 2013 self titled debut is their best but would rate this one and the second one "Further" fairly evenly although this is less consistent in my opinion.

That begins with the 14 1/2 minute opener that I think could have been so much better. I like the thought process here of building slowly then starting over but each time they get more powerful. It's just a little tedious because I say "more powerful" but it's not even really powerful at all, just becomes more energetic, more depth but still very tame. Well after 10 1/2 minutes we get riffs and true power. I like the guitar before 12 minutes as it starts to solo. It's spacey again late.

"Surface Crawler" has some energy and they pay homage to that NEU!/ LA DUSSELDORF dance sound with those synths. Not big on that and it will come and go as they repeat hemes here. So the first half of the album is good but far from great but then we get the seven minute "Et Oasis" and the almost ten minute "LHC" where they more than make up for it.

"Et Oasis" has some beautiful spacey sounds that come and go while the rest is energetic and catchy. "LHC" opens with sequencers and cymbals and builds to drums and more as it plays out. So good! It continues building to a point, followed by a calm then starting over sequence. The closer "Moebius Trip" is more in line with the opening two tracks but for me this is a solid 4 star album that continues their high quality of releases.

I hope to spend time with what is their most recent album "Orbis Quadrantis" in the coming weeks.