EP Review

Monument - Rock The Night!Monument – Rock The Night!

With the long term veterans in heavy metal attempting to keep their astounding legacies going, there has been an abundance of new bands emerging on the scene with what seems to be the mutual goal of pushing the classic style of music on a younger generation in an attempt to keep it alive. Ex-White Wizzard frontman Peter Ellis put this project together and isn’t wasting any time messing around, by asking Richie Faulkner who’s now famous from his stint in Judas Priest to provide guest guitar work provides a media buzz around the album, drawing already existing NWOBHM fans into their new quest for attention.

Looking at the EP, musically of course, it feels like your bog standard traditional style with modernized production values. Being quite familiar with the band White Wizzard throughout their career I was already well prepared for what kind of vocals to be expecting, very reminiscent of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson with a slight twist. It’s just clicked for me that they’ve been heavily advertising that Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner guest stars on the record, but this isn’t really that big of a pull in all seriousness as Faulkner has never actually contributed to any released Priest material he was just a touring member so that is a bit of a misguided association. Nevertheless I need to not look at this with the intended act of rejuvenating an old school genre as it affects a journalistic point of view about the actual quality of the music.

The song’s themselves are like I said, well produced NWOBHM songs with modernised guitar techniques and tones, the track featuring Faulkner is only a guest solo and it’s the title track “Rock The Night” and you have to give the guy credit that is a blazing solo, quite the tasty little number. “Fatal Attack” thought has an introduction that is exactly like Iron Maiden’s “Prowler” and I know that this is what they were going for as the link is meant to be there; to me it is just an undeniable likeness proving that they are running out of original riffs.

Overall as a starting EP it’s quite the start of a career, but the depth of the career is yet to be seen as if they’re taking the “influence” card from famous act to this extreme then I can’t see them going on as long as a band would usually last or if they do I can’t say that I have faith they’ll find that much success in the long run. It’s got its distinctive moments and sounds the part but I’ve heard it all before with things like this.

3/5

Review by James Webb

 Band Members

Peter Ellis
Lewis Stephens
Dan Baune
Jim Ramses
Matt C
 Track Listing
1. Rock The Night
2. Carry On
3. Midnight Queen
4. Fatal Attack
5. Blood Red Sky
 Band Related Links
Monument Facebook
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?