Monday, January 8, 2018

Vinyl Review: "Trust No One" by The Mons

Trust No One
There's nothing better than comfort food, and by food of course I mean beer.

Beer is an acquired taste if we're really honest with ourselves. Anyone who'll tell you that they fell in love with their first sip is probably a damned dirty liar.

Well, don't trust those people.

Most of us have a beer or two that really strikes us when the mood hits. Personally, I love a great Scottish Ale, preferably a Scottish IPA or the odd liquor barrel aged variety, Innis & Gunn, I'm looking at you....and I'm thirsty.

Then there are just times when another flavor, style, whathaveyou isn't really what you're looking for, but it's what's available. That's usually when I drink an American Lager. Nah, who am I kidding? I love a good pisswater lager or seven.

The Mons
When it comes to music, my preferred flavor is metal. This blog's preferred flavor is metal. Hell, I work with metal that's not the music. So there's definitely a latent motif of metal in my personal life, my avocation, and my vocation.

It's all kind of funny and it makes me laugh.

There are times when metal isn't what I'm looking for. When a good Tampa Bay Death Metal record isn't going to warm the cockles of my heart or when I need some strange new sort of anger that'll really kick me over the edge.

There are folks in my life who're punk rock till the day they die. Then there's the folks that want to find some way to link everything they love to punk rock, because they're so punk rock.... Bruce McCulloch, I'm looking at you.

Well, punk rock and all of its offshoots usually makes me feel like where are the bitchin' guitar solos?

There are times though, that something so off the wall, so rebelliously written, and so different from my standard deviations of music is precisely what I need.

Today, that round hole is filled by a square peg called The Mons. They're from the Second City, Chicago. (In the video below I said they were from Jersey. Sorry, guys. But we got it right in the end.)

Let's call a thing what it is. I have no idea what the difference between hardcore and punk rock is. Sorry, I don't know. Teach me in the comment section, but I do know they're related...closely.

So, it was easy to expect some heavy music with that classic thrash styled vocal that I hate. Simple songs with no melody, but chock full of heavy.

Well, yes, and no. Trust No One is certainly fast and heavy, but the vocals are in a sweet spot I'd never heard before. Let's get out our graph paper and make a Venn Diagram. The vocals are the intersection of The Sex Pistols, Joey Belladonna of Anthrax, and D.R.I. Nicely melodic, but with a glorious sneer.

The whole of the album feels like  they know more than the audience they're singing to. If you're going to change the world, there's two ways of doing it: come across as someone who knows they know more than you or come across as some hillbilly who tricks you into thinking the right way....

You can either go arrogant jerk or Clarence Darrow, but you gotta commit.

The Mons have committed to the former rather than the latter. It's a great choice. In Hardcore there's no room for wishy washy business. (Right?)

There's a great amount of musicality to go along with the extreme hate for Dick Cheney, Christianity, and many other things. They hate enough stuff that during the course of this record, you're going to think...man I know those feels.

For me...it was all about Dick Cheney....fuck that guy.

They sent along the band variant color (see the video below for how gorgeous it is), but there's also an orange splatter, and classic black.

The disc was sent outside of the jacket and it's as flat as a carpenter's dream. Maybe I don't have enough colored variants, but it's the only one I have in the color, which is awesome.

They also include a lyric sheet and some interestingly surreal photos in the liner notes.

There's nothing to complain about this record either outside or in, just remember it's a 45 RPM 12". Put your turntable back to 33 after you listen to it.

Release: 10/2017
Genre: Hardcore
Label: Triple Eye Industries
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