MonuMENTAL Metal oddities collection is wrapped around bizarre bands BUT NOT humour music. Odd turns, eccentric elements, milestones of human vocal capacity and also some instrumental extremities. This collection ought to surprise and bewilder the listener, however its middle point is still great compositions.

1. The starting track, Dysrhythmia‘s probably most rhythmic and meaningful song, Room of Vertigo starts with a lot of groove. Dysrhythmia excels in making seemingly random mess that starts to make sense on further listens. Room of Vertigo is one of the easiest tracks to grasp as it has immediately catchy dreamlike melodies and a steady beat.

2., 3., 4. Next to follow are tracks from Pryapisme’s Futurologie epic, which is one track divided to 11 different movements. At best Pryapisme is masterful in combining everything possible in their soup and yeah, they are French. Obviously the last track of Futurolgie release is a 23 minute orchestrative version of the release. Figures.

5. Havoc Unit started as Festerday in the beginning of 90s, quite a regular grindcore/death metal hybrid. They switched their name to Cardinal in 92, to Peacefrog in 93, to Raw Energy in 93 and 95 they finally slid off to oddland by becoming …And Oceans, symphonic black metal electro hybrid.

Their second album The Symmetry of I / the Circle of O was a double release with a symphonic black metal album + a electronic/ambient/noise album. Which is really quite boring to be honest. Later on they incorporated more electronic and industrial elements and kept having extremely weird track titles in various languages. How about Äcid Sex and Marble Teeth (You-phoria), I Wish I Was Pregnant, Mikrobotik Fields / Uråldrig saga och sång or Angelina: Chthonian Earth: Her Face Forms Worms. The list goes on.

In 2005 …And Oceans became Havoc Unit and released a brilliant brutal death / industrial / experimental album h.IV+ (Hoarse Industrial Viremia) 2008, along with a few splits. Klan Korps [Volkssturm & Erregung] (feat. Strom EC.) is a piece from this album. The circle (of O) closed in 2013 when Havoc Unit became… you guessed it, Festerday!

6. After Havoc Unit there are a few milestones. First Demilich’s When the Sun Drank the Weight of Water. A finnish progressive death metal band which is musically magnificent and also has a distinctive feature. Their singer Antti Boman (un?)officially has the deepest growl in human history. His growl goes so deep that in the 90s when they were active Terrorizer hired an expert to state that the growl cannot have been made without pitch shifting. But apparently it is! Demilich is also known for weird track titles. Some of my favourites are. The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed) and Inherited Bowel Levitation – Reduced Without Any Effort.

7. Fleurety is exactly the opposite extremity in pitch. Their singer Alexander Nordgaren ruined his vocal chords by shrieking like a fucking eagle. It sounds really painful and it is incredible singing like that is even possible. Profanations Beneath the Bleeding Stars is also a surprisingly solid track, however their next release Min tid skal komme is the real jewel of their discography. One of many “lost” metal releases that many consider a classic but most people have never heard about.

8. Amesoeurs can be thought to belong to what some people not all unscornfully regard as hipster metal. Their only full length from 2009 is in my opinion not too great but it appealed to a lot of people. Sure enough it has some brilliant bits. La Reine Trayeuse sums it up well by starting as a weak pop track. In the middle of its length things turn so bewildering I’m not sure any other except French people could pull this off so magnificently. First the pop base turns to fast paced black metal then the female vocalist puts on quite a lot more a torturous shriek you’d ever expect this band to be capable of. And I mean its not just 3 seconds, it lasts about half a minute. The end of the track is also damn excellent.

9. Meads of Asphodel and 10. Sigh are rare breed who both formed to monsters of mixing different genres to their mostly metal basis on their own. Just listen how My Psychotic Sand Deity switches between hard hitting metal and dreamy interludes turning into angelic female singing to hard rock soloing to black metal. Or how Amnesia Blues’s away with growling vocals and the smoothest piano jazz solo in metal history.

11. More monumental vocal and instrumental extremities with You Suffer by Napalm Death. The shortest track ever recorded and also one of the fastest lyrical outputs ever. “You suffer, but why?”. All this in exactly 1.316 seconds.

12. Behold… The Arctopus annoys me quite a bit when listened in large quantities but they work well served in careful small doses. Like the short bursting Putrefucktion. They are one of the most extreme bands in terms of the amount of different sections every track contains. Putrefucktion is more just a mindfuck, a very entertaining and peculiar mindfuck.

13., 14., 15. Meshuggah the old odd groovemonster that somehow influenced one generation of teens to create an own popular genre, Djent. The album Catch-33 is clearly my favourite bit of Meshuggah discography with its lovely rhythmic background. It is nearly a one track album as it flows from one track to another so smoothly. Just when you think you get the rhythm, it changes to something else! The last four tracks are all diamond, but in this collection I left out the last one, ending it with Shed, Persona Non Gratae and Dehumanization.

I am getting an unsubstantial amount of satisfaction about the unpredictability of these tracks, especially the end of Dehumanization. I tried to further help the listening mood by placing the tracks in rather eccentric order. The plan was to fuck with ones brain, but also to deliver logical transformations too. This was probably the funniest compilation to do and I think it transfers well to listening experience.