Mono’s performance was so terrifyingly noisy it should’ve come with a storm warning, and yet still the show carried an air of elegance. Even support act We Lost The Sea managed to craft a beautiful-yet-chaotic soundscape with their finely tuned post-metal. Performing beautiful open chords, every song took the audience on a sprawling journey through sound. The harmonic six-piece demonstrated a natural talent for airy and ominous songs, each one gathering sizeable momentum, with the band members increasing the noise on a bar-by-bar basis. The final result was a swirling tornado of noise, blasting with a fury that could strip the wood off an abandoned cabin.
Mono are incredible musicians, and together they home in on single styles or song structures to the point of perfection, rarely straying away from their apparent goal. This showed in tonight’s set – many of their songs felt similar, often opening slowly and turning into a thunderous juggernaut tinged with an opera feel. The band began with three of the four members curiously perched on stools, but as things became louder, they rose to add emphasis to their performance.
The drums fluttered from transcendent taps to militant blasts, while the guitars were laced with enough reverb to shake a person’s bones. Furious picking saw Mono working their amps to the absolute limit, trebly tones screeching across the hall like the cries of a deep-sea whale. There were moments when the guitar would rip into a warp of feedback, only to be counterbalanced by delicate tinkles of either keyboard or glockenspiel.
The epic length, weighty tone and curious instrumentation gave you the feeling of watching the performance of a film score. For a four-piece act, Mono played with the strength of 20 musicians. After a climactic light show backed up their near post-apocalyptic finale, Mono bowed, said their thanks and gracefully vacated the stage. Many a crowd member replied with nothing but a gaping mouth, stunned by the power of what they had just witnessed.
BY THOMAS BRAND
Loved: That tone. Fwoar.
Hated: People could you please stop talking while people are trying to enjoy a show? I mean you’ve got a whole beer garden for it, why not go there?
Drank: Water. It was surprisingly good.
