Interview with Monolyth
Tell us about your latest release: the main concept; what fans should expect; what were/are your goals with it:
“A Bitter End / A Brave New World” is a long-awaited hard piece of work as far as we are concerned!
We released that album 11 years after our first one (“Catch the Sun”, 2007), and it took 3 years in the making.
Amaury and I (Julien) finished the writing in 2016, shortly after Batt, Tristan and Fafa joined the band.
We’ve been looking for the perfect line-up for a while, and we finally have it.
The main concept of the album is based on a personal journey, consisting in getting rid of all the bad influences, the bad vibes and ideas that can affect someone as a human being, in order to become a better person. A journey though life and its complexity, personal reconstruction leading to serenity and new found inner peace.
12 pieces of melodic, catchy and heavy tunes, in the vein of bands we love, such as Soilwork, In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Architects, Killswitch Engage, The Haunted, or our French fellows T.A.N.K.
Did you have a specific sound in mind when you formed the band, or did that grow and evolve as you played together?
As the band was formed, the idea was to produce Melodic Death Metal, basically.
As time went by, the writing and influences evolved, changed, and we added some progressive structures, samples, opened our own style’s boundaries, to propose something more mature, free from the ghost of our early main influences, more personal.
How does your writing process normally work out?
Amaury writes all the lyrics. It’s his Catharsis. For this album, he and I wrote all the music. Batt, Tristan and Fafa brought some arrangements before the recording. The writing process generally goes like : everyone comes with ideas, melodies, riffs, we put all that together, shake it for a while, and see what comes out haha Seriously, we come with ideas, try different arrangements, build the songs around a main riff or melody, and then Amaury put a final point on everything.
What are your ambitions and how far do you want to push your band?
Well, we want our music to spread over the world, as far as possible, and get to play as much as we can! We don’t have worldwide carreer Gojira-ish expectations (but hey! If we get the opportunity to get as high, we’ll do it for sure!), we just want and need to continue having fun playing our music. We’ve already started working on the next album, so people don’t have to wait another 10 years or so to hear from us again haha
What are your influences/musical references and the impact those same influences had in your sound?
We all have many various influences, inside and outside Metal. Melodic Death Metal is what brought us together in the first place, but we also listen to Prog, Djent, Doom, Black, Death, Nu Metal, Hardcore, Post Core, etc… Some of us love Blues and Jazz, Fafa plays in a Rockabilly Metal band (Dead Bones Bunny, you should definitely check them out!), etc…
What’s next for you?
We have many gigs planned for 2019, a French tour for this fall (more details to come), and we begin working on 2020 booking, with dreams of visiting some European countries like Spain, Portugal, Poland, going back to Germany and the Netherlands, and who knows, maybe get a tour support for one of our idols’ tour!