Mono draw on the power of Dante and Albini for ninth album Requiem for Hell

His first involvement with Mono was on the outstanding Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, in 2004. In Requiem for Hell, the familiar intricacy of playing impresses, especially in "Ely’s Heartbeat", an exquisite composition that, like the best of Mono over the last fifteen years, integrates a filigree of instrumentation with a powerful surge of sound that avoids the trap of bombast; a trap that can catch some lesser post-rock outfits, resulting in a total effect that amounts to rather less than the sum of the constituent parts.

There is some unevenness on this album, though. Where ideas are intelligently pursued and the power is more restrained, the result is a delicate beauty, as in the enigmatic delight that is "Stellar", an almost static piece that turns gracefully on a beautiful keyboard sequence, concluding fittingly. It’s the highlight of the album and works much more effectively than the long title track that promises much in the first third but then lacks clear direction, provoking a sense that the road not taken might have been a more fruitful short cut to defining the demonic destination. Over-ambition can lead to hubris, as Dante would certainly have recognised.