Genre : Industrial metal, Electronic, IDM, Glitch
Released : February 18th, 2021
Label : Self-release
FFO : Aphex Twin, Filmmaker, 3TEETH, Igorrr
An electronic project involving members of Frontierer?
Yup, Monsters Around Us had me curious right away with that premise.
"Inverted Signs" is the debut LP of this Australian one-man project that mixes different styles of harsh electronic music (drum&bass, IDM, glitch) with industrial death metal.
For a debut release, it already boasts a pretty cool cast of guests, including members of Frontierer and Kadinja.
However I was a bit surprised by the usage of those guest spots since they kind of subverted my expectations.
For example : I wasn't expecting to hear Chad Kapper's (Frontierer)feature on the album opener and I would have expected a much more chaotic track to have him feature on.
It's surprising but it also works fairly well!
Especially the Pierre Danel (Kadinja) feature in which Pierre's warm jazzy guitar solo nicely contrasts with the cold and rigid industrial electronics.
The compositions are fairly minimalistic and very rythm-based which gives the music this very mechanical and impersonal feel to it and again, it works pretty well.
However I'm not sure whether that would have been the case if the project were to be longer (the album doesn't go beyond 25 minutes of play), so maybe it was a smart move to keep things short.
I liked the lo-fi style of production on "AcidRainPt.2" and the closing track featuring Owen Hughes (ex-Frontierer, Komoru) on drums came as an explosive surprise and a bit of a jumpscare to be honest.
I would have loved to hear more tracks in that same sort of direction on this project!
I feel like the guitar parts greatly add to the aggression of the percussive electronics and make the music feel wider and more crushing.
However, if Monsters Around Us keeps working on that sort of sound for his next projects and improves upon it, I believe he could come up with some seriously original, fresh and devastating tunes that would attract more attention to his music.
But for the time being, this is a pretty solid debut and you should consider giving it a shot if industrial metal and hard sounding electronics is your kind of thing!