Necronoclast
Monument (Reissue)
3.9
Some things should just stay dead and buried. No one likes a zombie. We put you in the ground for a reason, you filthy bastards. It is in everyone’s interest that they get cracked over the head with a shovel as soon as they try to escape their dirt confines. It would be considered charitable of me, then, to ensure that this review solidly connects with Monument’s decaying skull, knocking the last remnants of life out of an entity that should have remained silent and forgotten.
This edition of Monument is a remaster of Scottish black-metal band Necronoclast’s 2006 debut, including an additional “bonus” track. Its first arrival went unnoticed, so Moribund Records dredged the endless ocean where the bodies of the damned float listlessly for all of eternity, and hauled Monument’s corpse back up to the land of the living.
The entirety of the album’s sound even typifies the undead. Its gait is slow, hobbling, as if hindered by muscles riddled with the aftermath of worm feasts. The music meanders aimlessly, staring blankly as it wanders without direction. It attempts to imitate life, having an inkling of what is normal song construction, but ends up soulless and tired from start to finish. Incoherent efforts to replicate human speech dominate the overly long songs, sometimes just forgettable, other times amusingly pathetic. Not one track is memorable in any way, an empty and vacant mind at the wheel.
The only thing remotely remarkable about Monument is how boring it is. That trait, however, is what distinguishes the album from your average walking dead, as at least conventional formerly deceased abominations instill fear and terror, creating a motivation for their destruction. Monument is far more insidious. Its vapidly tedious method of exterminating the living is carried out by lulling the victims into dullness-induced comas, followed by brain consumption.
In short, this is a disc that deserves to be steadfastly ignored, so that it may shuffle its way back to the hole that was dug for it.
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