Dead Poet Society – Monarch (Spinefarm)

Hollywood On Fire; Roach; Die If You Don’t; Sinner Systems; Lost; Cold; Psalm 136; Dead On The Inside; Miami For The Weekend; Get Hot; The Park;The Art Of Suffering
(Spinefarm)

Dead Poet Society has never sounded particularly interested in staying inside the lines, and Monarch finds the Boston quartet pushing those boundaries even further. Their third album is a restless, shape-shifting beast, where crunching alternative rock, electronic textures, swaggering grooves and huge melodic hooks collide with an almost deliberate sense of unease.

The opening salvo of Hollywood On Fire immediately sets the tone. A twitchy, distorted groove gradually mutates into something altogether heavier, while Jack Underkofler’s vocals veer between restrained menace and full-throated release. It is an appropriately unpredictable introduction to an album that rarely settles for the obvious.

Roach and Die If You Don’t keep the pressure firmly on, built around riffs that feel simultaneously dirty and danceable. There is a physicality to the record that makes even its stranger moments work. Dead Poet Society understand that heaviness isn't simply about turning the amplifiers up; sometimes it is the tension between what you expect and what actually arrives.

That sense of contrast is one of Monarch's greatest strengths. Sinner Systems has an infectious bounce beneath its darker subject matter, while Cold demonstrates the band's ability to construct a chorus big enough for the rock-radio crowd without stripping away their more abrasive instincts.

Then comes Lost, offering a welcome shift in pace. Vulnerable rather than confrontational, it gives Underkofler space to let the emotion carry the song before the arrangement gradually expands around him. It is moments like this that prevent Monarch from becoming an exercise in relentless noise.

Miami For The Weekend takes a more swaggering route, its loose-limbed guitar work masking an underlying bitterness, while Dead On The Inside and Get Hot continue the album's fascination with turning discomfort into something irresistibly catchy.

What makes Monarch stand out is its refusal to choose between experimentation and accessibility. There are enormous hooks here, but they come wrapped in warped guitars, unconventional rhythms and enough darkness to stop proceedings becoming predictable.

The closing The Art Of Suffering leaves things hanging rather than going for the obvious grand finale, which feels entirely appropriate. Dead Poet Society aren't interested in neat conclusions; they're interested in atmosphere, contradiction and the uneasy space between melody and mayhem.

Monarch is an album with ambition and attitude. It can be abrasive, melodic, strange and surprisingly vulnerable, sometimes within the same song. Most importantly, Dead Poet Society sound like a band trusting their instincts rather than chasing somebody else's version of alternative rock.