Dead Men Tell No Tales is the new double CD set from Monarch, originally released as two separate vinyl albums in their homeland of France. This band play a blackened mix of doom/sludge/drone/psychedelic/ambient/stoner style that just oozes with menacing, feedback induced riffs and the crazed shrieks & eerie spoke word ramblings of singer Emilie. Listening to this crushing stuff will instantly bring to mind Black Sabbath, The Melvins, Earth, sun 0))), and even The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Tracks like "Speak of the Sea", "Winter Bride", and "Swan Song", literally pound you into submission with inhumanly heavy and slow guitar & bass dirges, with crashing drum beats that seem set in slow motion. Don't let the petite frame and pretty face of Emilie fool you-this chick can induce terror with her psychotic vocals that are like a bastard child of Angela Gossow and Arthur Brown. At times, this can be pretty brilliant stuff, as the riffs are so drenched with distortion and feedback that you can't help but get sucked into the cavernous vortex. However, much of it goes on for too long and tends to meander a bit. Perhaps they could have shortened some of the songs a tad and released this as one album? Who knows, but man, these riffs...they kill.
Track Listing
Disc 1 -Speak of the Sea
1) We are Musicmakers (Long Version)
2) Speak of the Devil, Speak of the Sea
3) Dead Men Tell No Tales (Spoken Version)
Disc 2 -Die Tonight
1) Winter Bride
2 Swan Song
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