Onhou – Monument
Release Date: 9th December 2022
Label: Tartarus Records/Lay Bare Recordings
Bandcamp
Genre: Doom, Sludge.
FFO: Dopethrone, Weedeater, Conan.
Review By: Paul Cairney
Monuments is the 2nd album by Dutch Doomsters, Onhou. Clocking in at a tickle over 41 minutes, it is an old-school doom album, with the shortest of the 4 tracks on offer, ‘When on High’ offering a mere 8 minutes of sludgey doomness.
The album is genuinely heavy, maybe not Conan heavy, few are, but it sits in the same room and will attract the same listeners who will not be let down by the dark, sludge filled riffs that permeate throughout.
The press release asserts that, ‘Monument drags you ever deeper into dark, withering worlds where time is gruesome and unforgiving, and the echoes of what once was have long since been lost and forgotten’. To me, it just bludgeons you across each of the 4 tracks.
The good thing is that there is enough variety throughout the run-time to hold your interest. The content of the album is bleak, Synths help to provide additional darkness, creating additional atmosphere to the ominous riffage that gets the heart pumping with unfettered ease.
The biggest and, perhaps, unfair issue with Monument is that is an album that will not attract new fans to the genre. There are other bands with better albums that will do that job.
Onhou are the band you listen to when you love the genre. Like your favourite pair of slippers, or that band t-shirt you own where it is only the stubborn under stains that hold it together (stolen from The Young Ones), it is an album you will want your friends to love, but they may not get it.
(3.5 / 5)
