Monomyth: Further

The Dutch band head off across time and space.

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The Dutch are dab hands at making blissed out psychedelia.

The likes of Sungrazer and 35007 (who have offered up their drummer Sander Evers here) seem to exist in a state of hazy, unhurried grace. The Hague’s own Monomyth have clearly caught their drift (the moniker itself a reference to an archetypal spiritual pilgrimage) and the five-piece’s second album charts a course between psych, prog and space rock while heading out to destinations unknown. Opener Ark M is locked in orbit around planet Neu! in order to gain momentum for the journey ahead, its fledgling, motorik groove growing ever more radiant as it’s cooled and caressed by synth breezes and gently pulsing bass. Spheres is a far more languorous affair, a somnambulant voyage in which guitar notes melt into the ether, Moog ripples like some languid interstellar phenomenon and the whole unfolds like it’s got all the time in the universe. Throughout Collision’s revolving playtime prog and the sci fi starbursts passing through the krautrock co-ordinates of 6EQUJ5, Monomyth’s repetition is stuck on an initial, boundless wonder. It is one that floods the senses.

Jonathan Selzer

Having freelanced regularly for the Melody Maker and Kerrang!, and edited the extreme metal monthly, Terrorizer, for seven years, Jonathan is now the overseer of all the album and live reviews in Metal Hammer. Bemoans his obsolete superpower of being invisible to Routemaster bus conductors, finds men without sideburns slightly circumspect, and thinks songs that aren’t about Satan, swords or witches are a bit silly.