'From the Banks of the Styx' by Monastery
Review
Today, Monastery kindly complete their long accumulating second EP 'From the Banks of the Styx' by releasing it in its entirety.
Like all the best sagas, it has been a long time in the telling. Dating back to 2023 with "Devil's Call" and "The Shore" (which may also be enjoyed via ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Ten‘) we've subsequently enjoyed "2124" and "Reckoning". An epic in terms of the length taken to share the narrative, but just right maybe for long dark Norse nights.
Also each instalment is sufficiently powerful & leaves such an impression on your psyche that recovery time is necessary to survive it all.
I puzzled (as we were intended to) over the storyline and tended to go for something between the Viking and the diabolic without being sure which or if it was a synthesis of both.
Liv, to her credit, replied to my enquiries over those two years with a polite declination to spoil the story and I'm glad she did: it would have spoiled the ending and the release of the final tracks.
These are called "Revenant" and "Kharon's Toll" and round off the story with as much compromise as the preceding tracks, which is to say none.
How right was I? Well a little bit possibly (please feel free to laugh at that). Mythological: yes. You'd have been hard pressed not to get that right, though I got the wrong culture by around a thousand years and as many miles.
Diabolic: yes I think I can claim that ("Devil's Call" is pretty specific so it's not a huge critical coup).
He pops his satanic head up again in "Revenant". In fact he even adds his own guest vocals which are pretty scary as well as impressive. Probably the heaviest of all the EP tracks, I imagine they kept it back rather than releasing it as a single out of concern for the well being of their fans. This one really is best experienced via a build up through the other tracks. If you plunge in directly… well just be careful.
"Kharon's Toll" certainly introduces a useful contrasting dynamic into what otherwise is frankly an overpowering set once assembled: it's certainly a bit slower (but that does not reduce any sense of menace: in fact I'd argue that it simply ratchets it up further). Though the band classify it as a "ballad", in the world of "prog-doom-thrash heavy metal" such matters are relative. If there is anything acoustic on there it's buried beneath the electric guitars. At least you get a slight chance to recover some breath for a moment.
What you must say is how effectively impressionistic Monastery are: they conjure up an aural world which fits the story like a glove: even if this can be overpowering at times, at least it cannot be accused of underselling the premise. I like breadth of vision and they've done well over the past few years to create a cohesive and sustained narrative which nonetheless keeps the listener on their toes: it's a musical equivalent of one of those Victorian serial novels where each instalment ended with a cliffhanger to what your appetite for the next one.
I wonder what on earth they'll come up with now 'From the Banks of the Styx' is fully out?
Look out for Monastery live next Friday (June 20th) when they are headlining the next ‘Hot Music Live Presents' fundraiser at & for The Tin, alongside Gutter Puppy, Permanent Daylight and King of the Alps. I imagine you'll get to hear many of these songs then.
Tickets are available via: https://www.ticketweb.uk/event/hot-music-live-presents-monastery-the-tin-at-the-coal-tickets/14371523
