Future Shock – Out April 16th
Self-Release
16 April 2021
Monarch is a heavy metal band from San Diego, consisting of Matt Smith on vocals and guitar (NIHILIST, DAMCYAN), Casey Trask on guitar (THE THREE TREMORS, CAGE), Gabe Mendez on bass (SUPRA SUMMUS), and Adam West on drums. Formed in 2007 by Casey Trask and some buddies in high school, Monarch weaved its web across San Diego, finding the best musicians to keep up with the lightning-fast rhythms, smashing drums, and screaming guitar solos, the standard was hard to keep until the right members were found. Adam West was next to join the band bringing a fearsome ferocity that few have ever seen in a drummer. His all-out style drumming and love of heavy metal was a perfect fit for Monarch’s earlier thrash metal material and has since been refined into a speed metal killing machine. Next to join would be Matt Smith, always revered by the members of Monarch as being one of the most creative and eccentric musicians in San Diego playing with local bands Damcyan and Nihilist, Adam and Casey would go to his shows and stare in awe as he would warm up and soundcheck with Yngwie Malmsteen licks. Matt joined the band around 2016, a year later the band would release their debut album “Go Forth… Slaughter” featuring raw thrash metal with a hint of what was to come, with Matt’s affinity and background in classical music, the sound was bound to evolve in the most epic way imaginable. Last to join, but certainly not least, was Gabe Mendez. The members of Monarch would always enjoy watching Gabe’s band Supra Summus perform in San Diego in which Gabe was the bass player/ lead vocalist and was certainly more than capable of the demanding rhythms of Monarch. In 2020, Monarch recruited this demon beast of a bass player and hasn’t looked back since. Monarch has shared the stage with bands such as Death Angel, Nervosa, Powerglove, Act of Defiance, and in 2019, they won the Wacken Metal Battle in the USA to guarantee a slot at the greatest heavy metal festival in the world, Wacken Open Air. Monarch will release their new album “Future Shock” in the year 2021.
MONARCH – FUTURE SHOCK – Track By Track Explained:
The album as a whole:
It hits hard on a lot of levels, there are the riffs, the solos, the speed, the heaviness, the melodies, great memorable lyrics, the dynamic range of our creativity I think was truly expressed, and yet we still managed to sound like ourselves. We all just really look forward to sharing it with everyone.
Track by Track:
1. “Blast the Seed” was written all together in about an hour at a practice one day, structure and everything. It was when the most recent Black Dahlia Murder album came out at the time, I think it was “Nightbringers”, and Adam (Drums) wanted to come up with something with that vibe and I think Matt started it up with the main chorus riff and it grew from there, this one has a unique vibe because it was literally a creation from all of us at the moment and is a really fun one to play live. The lyrics are about blasting seeds of life into space to save a doomed race.
2. “Khaos Warrior” is one of our favorites to play, a bunch of guitar harmonies, melodic riffs switching into brutal thrash rhythms, it’s a quick one but super exciting, the lyrics are about the Dragonball Z “Tournament of Power”. Awesome visuals in the lyrics, this one was written entirely by Matt Smith (Guitar/Vocals)
3. “Future Shock”, the title track, written by Matt Smith is based on the show Futurama, waking up, after being cryogenically frozen, into a future world, This one has one of the catchiest choruses of the album and leans more towards the brutal and thrasher side of the spectrum.
4. “Nuclear Warfare” is about just that, and really slams you with loud thrashing brutal riffs till the end, also written by Matt Smith (as an assignment for a composition course while earning his Associates of Arts in Classical Music degree).
5. “Shred Or Die!” Is our first single and music video from the album, this one has probably been in the Monarch setlist for the longest, this one really hits home nowadays lyrically about civil unrest and power-hungry people ruling over others. The music video has gotten some heat as it features some heavy footage of the riots going on in America during COVID-19 and “Black Lives Matter” protests. But on the lighter side also features skateboarding around local San Diego skate spots.
6. “Multiverse” allows us a glimpse into Matt Smith’s classical guitar playing potential, as the rhythm section backs him up with a heavy chord progression and an insane bass line. It gives the feeling of spinning through the blackness of space with no hope of return. It is also the intro track to our next song…
7. “Fatal Vector”, Another of Matt’s creations, using very disgruntled, brutal, chromatic riffs. This is a very unapologetic, unforgiving track about being on a collision course with fate, death. This one is a nonstop smasher live.
8. “Collision of Bones” was written and recorded by our former bass player (Alex Pickard), (All other tracks either feature Gabe Mendez or Matt Smith on bass guitar), about a near fatal car crash he was involved in. Probably will not be heard live anytime soon out of respect of Alex’s departure from the band. It’s a thrash metal song with a brutal half-time feel 2nd half.
9. “Swarm Of The Whorenet” Another of our more collaborative tracks, this song started off as a fictional universe we created in a saga called “The Whore Of The North”, this is the point in the story that the protagonist (The Whore Of The North) is being pursued by servants of the antagonist, in the form of Warrior Whore Hornets, featured in our cover artwork by Marc Sasso who did work for Dio, Slayer, Judas Priest, and many others. This song is an adventure, varying in rhythm and intensity but a very quirky feel that leads into one of the most exhilarating solo sections of the entire album. And war chant that will make you want to yell along with “WORLD WAR WHORE WAR-WHORING!”
10. “Metal Soul” This one, Matt came to us with this awesome bending guitar harmony (heard in the Intro and throughout the song) that reminded me (Casey) of an old school Japanese cop show or something like that and we really wanted to make something of it. It developed into one of the tracks we are most proud of. The lyrics ended up being about the Legend of Zelda “Master Sword” or the “Sword That Seals The Darkness” and turned into a thrashy/power metal trip. Featuring some of the fastest double bass on the album from Adam West and an epic buildup to a crescendo that will make you yearn for the next record.
