Monolith Cocktail Blog

ALBUM REVIEW/Graham Domain

Simon Grab And Francesco Giudici ‘[No] Surrender’
(-OUS)

[No] Surrender is a Dark Masterpiece, a seething cauldron of anger and an uncompromising aural assault on social injustice and the underlying, ineffective and corrupt systems of power prevalent in modern societies. The greedy, self-serving officers of power protecting and abusing their positions of trust while condemning the community they are meant to represent and serve!

The music, or detailed aural atmospheres, created in the work, inhabit interior worlds of unease, suffocating terror, blackness, claustrophobic darkness, inescapable fear and the closed dark prison of the mind.

‘I Leave’ begins the chilling journey. The music surrounding you like an angry mob. Closing in, the one thought, to escape. But like a nightmare, you cannot move, cannot run, cannot scream, cannot breathe. Silent tears choke and bind the voice box. Suffocating dark sadness. The taste of death, like candy in your mouth.

In ‘Forest Spirit’ a sense of unease pervades, an atmosphere redolent of the 1970’s film The Warriors – trying to make your way home down ill-lit paths, potential violence around every corner! The music unbalanced, static and feedback, like walking through a crumbling dead city of dark looming buildings, cries and wails in the distance, carried on the wind. The blood stains of forgotten terrible murders visible in the moonlit sheen, droning chaos, sweat pouring down a white stretched face, mouth open in silent terror!

In ‘Sirens’ tuneless stalking feedback and footsteps of death echo back along the dark paths of a mind closed down. Hidden. A black wall erected to block out the alien landscape of dust and intermittent sirens. Moonlight seeping through black cloud, the awful bitter taste of death, no saliva in the mouth, sheer panic. A drill pressed hard against exposed nerve, deep wound, cut to the bone! Unsettling disquiet!

In ‘Wolves’ alien insect noise, disturbing, all-consuming smothering sound. High haunting feedback. A noose of sound, pulled tight, gasping for air, submerged in deep water, screaming out blackness. The final thought, terror, confusion, helplessness. Awaiting execution. The merciless look in dead eyes. The waiting, the not knowing! Buried alive, shallow breathing. A crescendo of abject fear.

The last track, ‘Aftermath’ slowly reveals its’ charms of rolling dust, thunder, high pitched feedback and static. Extreme weather engines, the constant pulse of machines, electricity burning through bodies, smoking flesh. The throb of a cold dead hell, insects crawling over the silence. The eternal unremitting high-pitched silence.

[No] Surrender then is the sound of pure evil disguised as benevolence, the helping hand withdrawn for your own good, replaced with the gift of poverty, starvation and death, awarded with a knowing wink and a dazzling smile. Photogenic devastation. Social Injustice has never looked so shiny and bright.

The Album is out now on the –OUS Label as a vinyl album and download album.