INTERVIEW: John Browne – Monuments

Tech metal heroes MONUMENTS made huge waves with their second album The Amanuensis and stemming from this the band relentlessly toured throughout a large portion of 2014. This left them in desperate need of a recharge, during this time they have been quietly going about their business and are now ready to make their grand return in the form of third album Phronesis which is due for release on October 5th via Century Media Records. We caught up with founding member and riff machine John Browne to get the low down on what we can expect from this release and an exciting project he has in store for the future.

MONUMENTS’ long awaited follow up to The Amanuensis entitled Phronesis is due for release. How do you feel this shapes up in comparison to the rest of your catalogue? 

John: It’s definitely different, I think it’s heavier personally and a lot more angry. I like it! [laughs] 

[laughs] I should hope so! 

John: I think it is a good representation of how we were feeling. There’s a good mixture of Gnosis and The Amanuensis without sounding similar. We’ve kind of refined what we are doing and made it more ‘poppy’ in places.

Where did the inspiration for the title come from? 

John: We actually had that title for the last record and we felt it didn’t work so it was put into a bowl which we kind of forgot about, then Chris started telling us what he was writing about we thought that would represent it really well. Phronesis was practiced in Ancient Greece and it’s basically learning to make decisions which aren’t governed by emotional ego which most of us pretty much have a bad time doing. Most of the time our emotion or ego will get in the way of the right choice. So that’s basically what most of the album is written about.

The press release stated that yourself and your band mates needed some time to heal after the last release. Do you feel this process has been cathartic and helped you through your struggles? 

John: I actually believe it has. When you spend a certain amount of time in a confined space with people you have to get on with them really well and for the most part we do but sometimes it can be overwhelming. In 2014 we were on tour from July until December where we did five different tours, one in Europe, three in the States and then we went off to Russia. We had a month off then went to do Soundwave Festival and then onto the KARNIVOOL tour so we played 100 plus shows within a seven/eight month period.

Wow, that sounds pretty intense! 

John: Yeah, it was pretty long. When we came back Soundwave didn’t pay us, we got ripped off by them and returned from America with $22,000 worth of debt! So yeah, the mindset of everyone at that point was pretty negative. Mike got injured and still can’t play drums now. He is going to have to have surgery. The entire vibe of the band because of all of that stuff was negative and that’s what we needed to break through. Almost take that time away and realise we still love doing it. It was just part of what happens being in a band that is up and coming.

It’s actually quite surprising as in the tech metal scene MONUMENTS are very highly regarded and life should not be that stressful! 

John: It wasn’t necessarily bad decisions on our part but the tours didn’t go quite as well as we had hoped. It was mainly the DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT tour, I love Devin and I thank him and ANIMALS AS LEADERS for putting us on that tour but our fee was really low and the merch didn’t sell as well as we thought it would. We estimated sales from how our last tour had went which did really well, our tour in the States with GLASS CLOUD, REFLECTIONS, SCALE THE SUMMIT and ERRA. That was our first US tour and we did really well on merch. The reaction was great but we came to learn very early into the Devin tour was that Devin fans only care about Devin at a Devin show. So merch didn’t go as well and that’s why we ended up with so much debt. It’s quite expensive to tour over there you know with flights, visas, vehicles, we had to hire gear as we didn’t have our own at that point. Soundwave would’ve technically paid off that debt, but then they didn’t pay us! [Laughs]. I’m really thankful for that entire time though as loads of new people heard about us because of The Amanuensis and hopefully people still love us when this album comes out as well.

It was interesting to read that the drums were tracked by Anup Sastry despite him no longer being a member of MONUMENTS. Do you see him continuing to contribute to the band in the future?

John: Potentially yeah. Daniel Lang has been with us since 2016, we did the summer festivals with him which was the last time we went out on tour. When it came to recording this album he had to many commitments to have time to do it, to really focus on everything and make sure it was all perfect so on THE CONTORTIONIST tour Anup played a couple of the new songs with us on that tour and even though it didn’t work out with him being in the band it ended amicably. There was no hatred or anything and we are still good friends, we approached him and he really wanted to do it. He did a stellar job on those drums!

Ah absolutely, Anup is a beast! 

John: He is a very good beast, yes! [Laughs] 

Was there anything you approached differently during the writing and recording process this time round? I know you have had Stygian Blue written for many years? 

John: Yeah, Stygian Blue and the beginning of Mirror Image were written in 2015. One of the tracks that didn’t make the album was also written in 2015 and may make some people a bit sad which was Atlas Part II. It didn’t make the record unfortunately but we still have it in the vault for another time though. When it came to the approach Olly wrote a lot more than previous records as when Gnosis was finished and written when he joined and with The Amanuensis he only wrote 2 or 3 riffs for that. On this one he was wrote full songs which I haven’t had any input on which are great so that is a different part of the writing process, having another writer being part of it rather than the majority of it just being me. As far as recording goes I’ve recorded all the guitars, bass, mixed and mastered it. This time I did nothing which I was really happy about! Drums were tracked by Anup in his studio, guitars and bass by Jim Pinder who is the assistant of Carl Bown who has done WHILE SHE SLEEPS, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE, FIGHTSTAR etc who is based out of Derbyshire. Chris recorded his vocals with Christian Machedo from ILL NINO and my business partner Joel Wanasek who has mixed the likes of ATILLA and Miyabi who is a Japanese guitar player/actor who has been in films with Tom Cruise, he said he would do us a test mix to see what we thought and he nailed it. I was really stoked as I didn’t have to do one element of production on this album.

That definitely takes the pressure off!

John: Yeah dude, I did so much with The Amanuensis, the writing began six months before we recorded it so I’d been listening to those songs for about a solid year and I noticed my insanity levels had definitely increased! For me not being part of that entire process was a huge weight off my shoulders and I think it turned out great. What do you think about the mix by the way?

I love it personally, to me, I don’t know if it was just my perception but at times Gnosis felt particularly sterile but with Phronesis it’s punchy, a lot more dynamic and very atmospheric so yeah I dig it!

John: Yeah it’s really in your face and ‘slamming’ isn’t it? It’s a very heavy sounding mix. I hope people like it.

A.W.O.L was your first release in many years, have you found you’ve received positive feedback from the track so far?

John: It’s been quite mixed actually. That was one of Olly‘s tracks and I wrote the last section. I think that’s maybe why it is slightly mixed. It still has the MONUMENTS sound but I think it’s just the difference in writing as they aren’t used to what Olly writes. It was mostly positive, some people didn’t like how the track sounded on YouTube. Actually, when it was released I didn’t get a chance to listen to the video and the mix is actually 12db quieter than on the actual CD. If you listen to YouTube then listen to the track there is a huge difference. It’s almost like there is no guitars there, YouTube ruined it! [Laughs].

Ah man, I think that’s the risk in this digital age as images and audio can so easily become compressed etc.

John: It’s mental isn’t it? Some websites don’t care about quality. But people seem to like the track and that’s good. I think they’ll like it more when they understand the concept and the lyrics. I think when they’ve got an explanation of this direction it’ll become clearer as one of the criticisms was the lyrics sounded too generic but words are inert, you know what I mean? The way that you perceive phrases or text and the emotion it brings out is different for every person. Have you ever seen the film Waking Life? There is a section called Words Are Inert and it describes the word love, the emotion it brings out is different in every single person. That’s a really big thing to point out. Just because of text and the way it’s written it may not intended the way you are perceiving it.

MONUMENTS will be embarking on a European tour to coincide with the album release. Are you excited to have some more songs in your arsenal to take out on the road with you?

John: Yeah dude, definitely. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve played Degenerate at this point! [Laughs]. We’re more than likely going to play it again on this tour but it’ll be good to feel uncomfortable again, you know what I mean? Where you’re not used to playing a track and you’re frightened you’re going to fuck it all up! We’ll be playing quite a few new songs on the tour but there is a few tracks on the album we’re not going to tackle yet as they’re very very hard to play. There is one track I’m actually really scared about which is Leviathan.

Ah, that’s probably one of my favourite tracks off the album!

John: Oh really, it’s got a bit of a nu-metal vibe right? Just bouncy all the way through. Vanta is probably the hardest song on the record by quite a long way and we’re probably not going to play that on this tour yet. It’ll give people time to know it, that and I’ll have enough time so that I can actually play it properly [Laughs].

Do you have anything special planned for these dates with it being a headline set?

John: Obviously it’s going to be quite a long set and we have three albums worth of material to choose from now so it’s quite exciting for us. We have to debate and decide what songs we want to play. As we have quite a lot of tunings we have to take into consideration what will work and how many guitars we want to take. As far as special things go we have a pretty awesome stage set up actually that we’ve managed to organise with some of our endorsements so it’s gonna be big! It’s going to be the best looking stage we’ve ever played so hopefully people will be excited for that.

This question could go one of two ways but here goes! I’ve seen you are hyping your new project on social media entitled Riff Hard but there isn’t a lot of details around on it quite yet. Is this something you could give me a bit of insight on or is it still fairly tightly wrapped at this point?

John: It’s fairly tightly wrapped but as I like you and we’ve had a good conversation I’ll tell you. So Riff Hard I’ve been working on for three years now with some of my business partners and there is one thing we noticed which is no one really explains how to play rhythm guitar. It’s mental. If you search the internet no one really spends any time on it. I mean, with lead guitar you have Tosin talking about ‘thumping’ and you have Andy James and all these great guitar players doing their thing but not one of them focuses on rhythm. That’s where this comes in. It’s going to be showing people how to riff hard! [Laughs]. I’ve been working on it for three years now and I’ve been flying to the States a lot to do it. We’re really excited by it. It’s going to be the most advanced break down of how to play metal rhythm guitar. It’s really tightened my playing up too. It goes from some of the most basic through to some of the hardest stuff I’ve ever had to play. It’s all about building up stamina, building up endurance. I mean, how many people do you know that can play Master Of Puppets the way that James Hetfield does? Like totally down picking the entire song. That shit is really fucking hard man! Everyone learns it as one of their first songs but playing it the way its intended to be played is one of the hardest songs in the world. Then he sings while he does it! It’s mental!

That sounds like a very cool project indeed. I’ll look forward to seeing it come to life. Thanks very much for your time man, I really appreciate it. I’ll leave you with one final question. Do you have anything you’d like to say to the readers of Distorted Sound?

John: I hope you all enjoy Phronesis and come to see us on tour. It’ll be really fun and you’ll get to bounce around to some groove! Thank you very much for the interview!

Phronesis is due for release on October 5th via Century Media Records

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