Mono will make you travel with Pilgrimage of the Soul, its eleventh album.
Created in 1999 in Japan, the band composed of Takaakira « Taka » Goto (guitar/glockenspiel), Hideki « Yoda » Suematsu (guitar/glockenspiel) and Tamaki Kunishi (bass/keyboard/glockenspiel) welcomed Dahm Majuri Cipolla (drums) in 2018. It’s the second album he plays on.
Those who already know the band’s music also know it is hard to label it, relentlessly sailing between a mild Post-Rock, heaviness from Post-Metal with Progressive influences, and airy tones. Fully instrumental, as usual, the album will make us dream, travel and above all take advantage of its intensity. Whether Riptide, the first track, does not late to call this jerky rhythmic with two powerful explosions, Imperfect Things slowly shrouds us with this veil or quietness before drums come to energize the blending, then the sound brutally ends. Heaven in a Wild Flower slowly lulls us before more majestic keyboards join this composition with a warm sound that will give birth to To See a World, a melancholic song. The rhythmic slowly progresses between those heady notes, until they come to a climax that will make the sound die. Innocence lights the flame again with this melting between melancholy, regular sound and haunting sound as well as some kind of energy and heaviness in the background. Then the energy fades away before unveiling an impressive and mystical rhythm part, that surprises us as much as it seizes us. The sound calms down once more before ending and letting place to The Auguries, a song of which ambient quietness barely hides the majestic energy that develops itself. The sound is still very majestic, giving a solid basis to those airy leads, then the ghostly Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand slowly appears. The song is long, which allows us to tame this sound that slowly gets unveiled, even revealing some saturation splinters before flooding us with all its intensity. The sound mesmerizes us, only creating some note changes, then And Eternity in an Hour comes to put an end to this oniric journey with a composition made of airy keyboards.
Unsurprisingly, Mono exactly knows what to do to touch us. Pilgrimage of the Soul speaks to our mind with heady tones, to our heart with a seizing intensity then to our body with its startling uniformity, to eventually reach our soul, as planned.
95/100