Can’t be killed: Gothic rockers Mono Inc.
Photo: Redferns, Frank Hoensch. All rights reserved.
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A basement staircase leads from every terraced house into the darkness. If there is one genre that flourishes in Germany, regardless of all trends, and reliably fills concert halls, then it is bratwurst-style gothic, brooding alternative rock with dark themes and kajal and masquerade. Evidence: RAVENBLACK, the current album by the band Mono Inc., which is currently (at the time of going to press for the ME issue 04/2023) number 1 in the album charts.
The band from Hamburg learned from the best in their dark discipline: they already accompanied the Schmonzettengrafen Unheilig on tour, as did the medieval rock band Subway To Sally. In more than 20 years as a band they have perfected a sound that you can blow dry on the drive home from a stupid day at the office without having to feel yourself and the misery of this fragile world too much.
Curly, over-the-top and, of course, hopelessly overloaded with kitsch
Mono Inc. play heavy guitar music with pounding and synthesizer nonsense that sounds like a fair in the crypt, flaky, over-the-top and of course hopelessly overloaded with kitsch. A dark princess has to be sung all the time, repeated in the tones of the grave, that angels never die, but in a way that sounds so penetratingly vital that it makes you angry. The guitars never sound so hollow and seriously lonely as in the Goth and Postpunk of the 80s, this band constantly whips you up with their power chords, in no case does it challenge you with musical or lyrical ideas.
No, there is no double bottom in this crypt. This tomb is a real safe space for everyone who doesn’t have the time or nerves for real darkness. RAVENBLACK is as abysmal as a quarrel with the neighbors, as grim as a letter from the tax office, as dark as a week in which you have to do the big house rules. Mono Inc. gothic is – ha, ha – hard to kill. And this is probably the scariest thing about their dark music.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 04/2023.
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