Underground super-group fail to live up to their astrological destiny
Just like Kubrick's (or Arthur C. Clarke's to be more accurate) 'not to be trifled with' interstellar slab, 'Monolith' is "full of stars", with Twin Zero comprising ex Vex Red, earthtone9 and Subvert members. What started life as a solo project for guitarist Reuben Gotto quickly gained momentum, as various members from the starry trio started to join, snowballing it into the full-time touring & recording band that exists today. Twin Zero now boasts a fulsome 7-strong line-up that includes a keyboardist (the brilliantly named Dave Cheeseman – wasn’t that a Steve Coogan character?) and 2 drummers – although this dual pad-beating doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference, certainly nothing overly impressive.
'Monolith' actually sounds more or less how you’d expect a record created by earthtone9 and Vex Red to; combining VR's electronic experimentation (although it is toned down here) with earthtone's epic avant-garde metal. 'Epic' is definitely the word to use, with a title track that spans an astonishing 20 minutes and another that comfortably exceeds the 7 minute-mark – we're not talking about radio friendly 3-minute verse/chorus pop-nuggets here.
Twin Zero have employed a bloody annoying track system – despite the fact that there is technically only 3 tracks, put it into your CD player and it'll come up with 9. The reason for this is that the aforementioned 'Monolith' is split into 7 parts (inventively titled Monolith 000-006), with the first two segments, unbelievably, separated by an independent song – 'Earthbound'. The track marks are for the most part extraneous, as rather than dividing stand-alone sections, it feels more like artificial barriers that have been put in just for the sake of it. The problem with this is well demonstrated with tracks 3 and 4 – 'Monolith 001'and '002'. The sombre '001' acts as a terrific introduction for '002', but if you skip straight to the second part then it sounds like the start is missing. Which, of course, it is. I just can’t see why you’d ever want to listen to one of these tracks in isolation (especially considering '002' is barely 2 minutes long), because a lot of them sound too fragmented without the support of their other cousins – they’re like components rather than a whole. It would’ve been better to either make the tracks more distinct, or just leave the track marks out altogether – simple is sometimes best.
Such an unnecessary hindrance is a shame, because there is some fantastic audio treats to be found here. The opening 'Monolith 000' slowly builds into a brooding organic instrumental that perfectly paves the way for 'Earthbound'; a startling metal assault that is worthy of anything Poison The Well have ever produced, apart from when it goes 'a bit Seattle' in the bridge that is. Guitar lines with a Thrice-esque technicality lead '003' into a pummelling opening, before soaring vocals that earthtone9 fan’s will be instantly familiar with calm the storm for a blissful, if brief, respite. The bizarre hidden track starts off sounding a bit like the soundtrack to the end of a cheesy film, where the hero has just saved the day and finally owns up to his romantic aspirations for the tough yet sensitive heroine. It gets a bit twisted towards the end, so the film was in fact probably a manga, and rather than a love scene, the hero was probably basking over his vanquished enemies' dismembered corpses. Roll credits.
Critics are apparently labelling 'Monolith' as "easily Middleton's best performance to date", but I can’t say I agree with that – 'Arc Tan Gent' still does it for me. Now I'm a huge fan of Karl Middleton – the man is a true gent, and I was also partial to a bit of Vex Red, so it pains me to say that Twin Zero is a bit of a disappointment. That's not to say that the music here isn't perfectly adequate, decent even, it's just a case that it isn’t quite as good as the sum of it's parts.