Mono – Scala, London 26/03/09

13 April 2009, 19:00 | Written by Adam Elmahdi

(Live)

It’s a quantifiable fact that any show involving a massive gong is going to be pretty great, and Mono had no intention of proving the exception to the rule. The feted Japanese post-rockers latest effort Hymn To The Immortal Wind shows a delightful disdain for subtlety and restrain, resulting in an album that straddles the fine line between ‘gloriously epic’ and ‘painfully overblown’ like a nervy tightrope walker. Their live show on the other hand has more of an edge to it. Without the 23-piece string section, the band deliver an experience that exchanges the syrupy arrangements that occasionally threatens to overwhelm the album for a rawer sound that nonetheless retains the emotional and visceral intensity at the heart of their sound.

But first we had to endure the gloomy shoegaze of Iroha, delivered with the energy of a stunned sloth by a guy who looked alarmingly like Heston Blumental, and two non-entities who were regularly overshadowed by a pre-recorded backing track. By virtue of their chosen musical genre, shoegaze acts are rarely noted for their scintillating stage presence but one got the impression these gents weren’t even trying. Their set was as emotionally, visually and aurally engaging as a breezeblock. If they did have any merit, it was to make Mono look better in comparison. Due to the correlation between post-rock fandom and exceptional tallness, I was rarely afforded the opportunity to actually *see* Mono but what I did espy suggested that a passion and energy far removed from the sterile soullessness of their supports – and musically, they didn’t so much blow them out of the water as stick a thermonuclear device up their collective arses.

If you’ve ever listened to Explosions In The Sky, Godspeed You Black Emperor or any act of that ilk, you’ll know what to expect here – slow-building instrumentals glacially crescendoing to a ear-splitting cacophony of fuzzy guitars and cymbals ad infinitum. The opening salvo of ‘Ashes In The Snow’ and ‘Burial At Sea’ weren‘t quite as vital as one would hope; like their songs, Mono take a while to get going, but once they hit their stride they consistently impressed. Volume-wise, they didn’t quite laminate the audience to the wall like My Bloody Valentine but you could still feel the bass reverberating down your spine like an pneumatic drill, and the ferocious squall of ‘Yearning’ was truly brutal, accentuating the ‘rock’ part of ‘post-rock’ to the fullest extent. Naturally, your appreciation of this show would depend on your tolerance for the formulaic nature of the genre. If slow-burning 10 minute odysseys underpinned by soft-loud dynamics make you come out in a rash, then I’d recommend avoiding Mono like the plague. But if you can overlook their structural conservatism, Mono are well worth checking out – especially if you measure the quality of a gig by how much your ears are ringing afterwards.