Sometimes you feel like freedom is a rug, heaven is a truck, tapes no longer exists, Joan Jett no longer loves rock’n’roll, you dream your shoes are rainbow-coloured, your guitar amp does not work, your best friends are out of town drunk on tenth-rate beer, well you should face it, you’re all by yourself, you can’t read or draw or do anything involving your eyes. At this very moment, only music can save your night. Last night, insomnia did not manage to ruin my emotionally unstable state of mind thanks to Monochrome’s latest album.
Monochrome had released nothing in Europe since their outstanding Laser in 1999 (they only released a 7’ in 2001 on Dim Mak Rec. which was really hard to get in Europe). The 6 piece German band comes back with a good-looking digipack entitled Ferro, a 7 song cd made of five brilliant noise-pop songs and two short but fine instrumental tracks.

Monochrome is going more and more pop at first sight but their intertwining male female voices noise-pop is still encrusted with emo parts for the best. “Fällt” is a nice noise-pop song which begins at full throttle, its atmosphere being close to the previous albums. These 5 songs take the time to slow down and offer lush arrangements, catchy vocals and alternate power chords riffs with varied quieter parts (from entwined arpeggios to post-punk passages). There’s often a guitar line loitering around for your greedy ears. In fact, it’s just the vocals that tend to be more heady and addictive but the songs remain far from being main-stream. ‘Angelfire’ (the very song which has already been released) & ‘Flimmern’ are the most catchy songs and therefore might be the ones representative of their next album. ‘Flimmern’ chorus remains in your mind, ‘Turning the hooks, turning the hooks to get in…”, and ends on a welcome old-school hard-core part. When they play gentle noise-pop somehow close to Stereolab and Prolapse at rest (‘Luftkissen’), the end of the song provides staccato ragged riffs full of utter stark energy. In ‘Insomnia’ there even is a surprising acoustic guitar wandering through the song disappearing to let a nice noisy crescendo build up and then surprisingly reappears.

Ferro is really enthralling and grows impressively on you. The two short instrumental tracks provide a break from the overall steady pace. Its major flaw is a proof of its stunning appeal: its length is disappointing (20 minutes only). 

Definitely one of the best things released this year so far. They’ve turned the hook to regularly get in your cd-player!

-SEB WOOd

/apr 1st 2003/