Amuk

The influx of classic thrash metal revivalists had become so overwhelming by the late-00’s that at some stage the fan was simply randomly picking new acts based on their aggressive, retro thrash-promising names (Merciless Death, Violator, Evil Army, etc.) unable to cope with the never-ending supply of sharp, fast-paced, also ultimately rehashed riffs. Not surprisingly, Monogono had easily slipped under every possible radar installed of recent years, first based on their nonsensical moniker (could mean something in Portuguese? Cristiano Ronaldo, are you here?), and second coming from the least metal-related place on the European metal map. Can you name me any Portuguese metal act except Moonspell? I doubt it; well, the more initiated may come up with the veterans (and still going) Tarantula who have been around since time immemorial with their mildly entertaining brand of progressive heavy/power metal. Ramp, anyone? Another stalwart on the modern aggro-thrash/post-thrash arena, often cited as the European answer to Pantera and Machine Head…

However, under strictly thrash-speaking terms Portugal can’t brag a lot, I’m afraid. There were Shrine with their good progressive take on the genre on “Perspectives” (1994), but apart from a bunch of demos released before and after this album, they failed to produce anything more substantial. One shouldn’t forget another intelligent outfit, Afterdeath, whose ”Backwords” (1995) was excellent modern progressive thrash with aggressive death metal vocals. The re-release of all their demos as one compilation in 2013 is a great way to also look into the more obscure side of their repertoire. A year later appeared this “nameless” outfit, Nameless, with the outrageously-titled “The Overcome of the Portuguese Bastards” (1996), the least worthy of this trio, an uneven amalgam of modern and classic thrash, also falling into the one-album-semi-wonder category.

But this is all history now, and we roll a decade forward to find this weirdly-named formation, Monogono, a bunch of Meshuggah-wannabes from Setubal who came splashing on the underground showing their middle finger to the up-and-coming thrash resurrection wave by producing an outstanding tribute to the 90’s by giving the groovy formula a healthy technical twist bordering on math. The operatic intro is just a disguise after which the band start shredding in the most chaotically stylish manner imaginable with the opener “Remolding Steel” which will not only “remold the steel”, but will also twist your musical perceptions in ways hard to carve even by the first two Meshuggah albums. Add a few short up-tempo death metalish escapades, and the cacophony will be complete not to mention the guttural quarrelsome shouty vocals. The rifforama achieved on this very first track is out of this world, surreal atonal melodies accompanying the apocalyptic shouts of the “vocalist” who never spares his vocal chords lightly relieved by a cool clean throat here and there.

Surprisingly, the wide gamut of super-stylized shreds always gets under control and in the end comes out as a coherent composition the latter either marked by a distinctive main motif or even by a memorable chorus. Complex techno-feats like “Predictable Crime” may go beyond the common listener’s threshold of acceptance, but this is all too perfectly executed to remain completely unintelligible. Even the most schizophrenic math practitioners at present would find hard to match hectic, constantly-shifting musical “anomalies” like “True Nature Revealed”, or one of the greatest progressive/technical thrash “stories never told”, “The Untold Story Part 2” (part one was the already mentioned intro), an overwhelming “supplier” of original riff-patterns and abrupt time-changes.

Things get more relaxed on the 2-part “The Endless Trip” which are quiet, meditative, all-instrumental pieces, but there’s no rest for the wicked… sorry, the insane, and here comes the next elaborate shredding installment, “Inner Epiphany”, ably supported by the final short, spastic modern thrasher “God of War”, a sheer precursor to the more digestible robotic landscapes on Meshuggah’s ‘Obzen”. And that’s it, the madness is over, after a short bonus track of industrial noises with no ties to music as a not very necessary finishing touch. “Can modern thrash get any better than that?”, is the question…

“Not really”, is the answer, certainly coming from those who are able to tolerate a musical experience of such high complexity. Imagine Meshuggah’s “Destroy, Erase, Improve” colliding with Coroner’s “Mental Vortex”, with Mekong Delta’s “Kaleidoscope” standing on the side waiting for the right moment to jump into the melee, with Voivod’s “Negatron” holding it with both hands trying to stop it from interfering… This amok… sorry, amuk-causing opus is a logical conclusion to the technical/progressive aspirations of the past decade, albeit summed up a few years too late. It even manages to sound wonderfully melodic among the visionary grooves putting to shame the hordes of the classic values’ rehashers “plaguing” the field at the moment who would find it really hard to come up with even one original riff even if their whole life depended on it. Well, this outfit here has done it for the lot of them with inventive decisions galore laying the ultimate example of modern technical/progressive thrash. A possible complaint would be the relative lack of speed and the strong side taken with the growing math fraternity, but we’ll leave this one for the cynical critics who always look for the obligatory “stain” to perfection without knowing that those stains actually make these works even more “beautiful”.

The band are reportedly active, but they’re taking their time wisely before embarking on the next chapter from their advanced cacophonous, fairy komatales; or maybe they’re waiting for the right time to resurface and sum up another trend of musical genius…