Monolithe - Black Hole District (2024)^{Release ID: 56522}

Anywhere in the darkest depths of the universe lies a massive vortex of terror and doom. Nothing close to it can escape, and it can even engulf light. It can pull things apart and stretch them thin until they break and scatter particles all around. And when it's all over, the dark void remains. If an offering of progressive death-doom can really work as a soundtrack to this bleak deadly phenomenon, this band knows how to do it right. Welcome...to the Black Hole District!

Two years after their previous album Kosmodrom, this Paris-based doom band, founded by guitarist Sylvain Bégot as a side-project to the defunct Anthemon, released a new album via Hammerheart Records. Black Hole District alternates between one-minute intros and EXACTLY 10-minute epics (a similar aspect to Neurotech's Symphonies II).

In atmospheric mist stands "They Wake Up at Dusk", a soothing intro. "Sentience Amidst the Lights" begins this dark heavy experience, guiding you with spoken vocals before descending into slow rhythms, melodic leads, and vocals ranging from growls to cleans. Next interlude "Elusive Whispers" has melancholic ambient keys. Adding some gentle touches is "To Wander the Labyrinth", then heavy riffs and rhythms touch down alongside the growling delivery, while balanced out with clean harmonies.

The energy is never lost, even when interlude "Suspicion" only consists of spoken vocals over ambience. "Unveiling the Illusion" unleashes guitar aggression in contrast with the string tranquility. Truly one of the greatest standouts here! Calming things down is interlude "Benefit or Hazard", though not without some anxiety-inducing suspense.

"On the Run to Nowhere" is filled with gothic harmony and interesting progressiveness for the more adventurous metalheads' pleasure. One more interlude "Moonfall" opens the entryway to the darkest part of the void. "Those Moments Lost in Time" is the perfect climax of slow doom, as growls and cleans battle it out once more. Sometimes it speeds up slightly while keeping the slow pace. And in the end, all fades away as you hear the spoken voice for the last time.

Black Hole District is for those who want to end the year in the darkest, most melancholic way possible. Sometimes, progressive death-doom can be so intriguing, and just like a black hole, it can grasp every soul it can find. Even the brightest soul!

Favorites: All 5, but the best of them are "Sentience Amidst the Lights", "Unveiling the Illusion", "Those Moments Lost in Time"

Black Hole District is french doomsters Monolithe's tenth album and marks yet another step in the band's musical and conceptual development. There is a narrative structure to the album, with the story taking influence from science fiction sources such as Blade Runner and Dark City. The story's protagonist, living on an Earth that faces annihilation due to the Moon having left it's orbit and falling inwards towards the planet, discovers, by a convoluted series of events, that he is in reality an android, not a human and this discovery looks set to cost him his life as the powers-that-be seek to terminate him for his knowledge.

The band have always made a "thing" of the track timings on their releases, which ties into their concepts, with Black Hole District's ten tracks alternating between one-minute instrumentals and exactly ten-minute long main tracks. Thankfully, as is always the case with the band, the specificity of the track timings doesn't feel forced and they never feel over-extended or truncated to accomodate these timings. I have a feeling that the band see themselves as storytellers every bit as much as musicians nowadays and, to this end, they have incorporated even more progressive elements into their music to the point where the progressive and the doomy are now held in perfect balance. This balance allows them the freedom to convincingly weave epic science-fiction tales without compromising on the inate heaviness of death doom metal, which is still, despite all the progressive flourishes, the heart and soul of Monolithe's sound.

A new element they have brought in, presumably specific to this story, is 80's style synths, in particular they have used the Yamaha CS-80 popularised by Vangelis, who is particularly influential here, especially (but not exclusvely) on the one-minute interludes which act as intros to the five main tracks, each one sounding like a snippet from the Greek's Blade Runner soundtrack. They have also brought in guest vocalist Frédéric Gervais of french progressive black metallers Orakle to provide clean vocals alongside new guitarist and vocalist Quentin Verdier's deathly growls, which gives the album a nice textural variation, vocally. Alongside the vocals a number of spoken word sections serve to advance the story and act as introductions to the events of the main tracks.

All this is the vision of the main man behind Monolithe, guitarist and keyboard player, Sylvain Bégot, who is the person solely responsible for all the band's songwriting and lyrics since their earliest days. I think that Sylvain's single-minded control of the artistic input imparts a cohesive consistency to Monolithe's output that may have become diluted by more diverse inputs. It has been obvious since the first album that, similarly to Ivar Bjørnson with Enslaved, Bégot's vision has always been beyond the boundaries of the genre conventions within which he works, even as he has no wish to completely set those conventions aside. He has now become exceedingly effective in how he weaves the doom and progressive aspects together and produces legitimately progressive doom metal as a result, with very few peers in the field. He is now able to convincingly produce a cinematic version of doom metal, that is able to impart the emotional and atmospheric highs and lows of great cinema. The poignancy of the closing track, "Those Moments Lost in Time", for example, is heart-wrenching, despite the heavy, looming main riff, as it references the Blade Runner death scene of Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty.

Black Hole District may not be unrelentingly heavy enough for some death doom acolytes, but for doomsters who love a cinematically conceptual tale, musically well-told with exemplary musicianship and songwriting then Monolithe are very much at the head of the pack. Although Blood Incantation will take all the plaudits for 2024 in this field for their new album, I don't think anyone should dismiss Black Hole District's claim to progressive extreme metal's science fiction concept album of the year.