Review Summary: Rough rides ain't nothing compared to me
As 2007 rolled around Monoral was growing in popularity and acclaim. Despite
In Stereo not meeting the expectations put on it,
Ammonite went on to ascend Monoral into the spotlight while
Petrol garnered them a well deserved success. Despite many feeling that Monoral couldn't rise above from that point, we were proven wrong.
Turbulence was another complete 180 for a band that was notable for completely meshing numerous genre's into one entire album. Unlike
Petrol's more Folk-Rock based sound,
Turbulence chose to dive more into electronic instruments and a more Hard Rock style. One example of the Hard Rock style is in "Monkey Cage" in which the guitar starts and begins to end soft, but most of the volume of it is turned up to make a hard "distorted" sound. "Sparta" completely turns up the heat as the guitar gets faster and makes a hard riff during some of Anis' singing.
"Tuesday" is a more Pop oriented track, with the vocals toned down a bit more and percussion becoming the main attraction throughout the song. Not to mention dual vocals allowing for a more "slick" sound when compared to the rest of the songs. "Shenanigans" has Monoral returning to Acid-Rock as the guitar is distorted and most of the sound is being given this "rough" edit to make it all sound as if it was blended together. Towards the end Anis' vocals reach a croak which is overdubbed with a regular crescendo creating an odd finish to the whole song itself.
By far the most tremendous track is "Kiri". Contrary to popular belief, Monoral was already popular in Japan by the time Ergo Proxy came out. Despite the song reaching a nice audience in the States, Ergo Proxy was not a very big success over in Japan, so Monoral weren't exactly banking on its potential success because they didn't need it. "Kiri" contains a beautiful guitar section that makes a continuous "pump" as Anis completely goes ham vocal-wise. He repeats "come and save me" at least 5 times during each section; and at the volume he is singing it, it is not easy to do at all. Not to mention its completely cryptic lyrics that make no sense whatsoever:
"You complete my fate
The world unwinds inside of me
You complete my fate
The halo crawls away
You repeat my fate
Rewinding all we can
You refill my place
You refill my place, place"
Turbulence was a massive success, and Ergo Proxy gave "Kiri" a nice audience over in America and elsewhere in the world. With its success, Monoral had completely eclipsed their own debut and then some. With
Turbulence, the vocals got louder, the experimentation got crazier, and the simple wackiness just increased exponentially. By far this is one of the greatest Japanese Alternative-Rock records of the late 2000's and probably one of my personal favorite Alternative-Rock albums of all time. This was the peak, the tip of the mountain. Now it was time to descend back to civilization.
