In a way, every album has a story. In the case of Songs of Abandon (Supernatural Cat Records) though, the latest release from solo project THE MON, the story is a specific and unique one. Several years ago, Urlo (bass player and vocalist for doomy, heavy-rock unit Ufomammut) decided to try writing nine songs, each one in a day—just himself and an acoustic guitar. Fast forward to 2025 and Songs of Abandon comes as the first part of a two-album concept: Embrace The Abandon (to be followed by Songs of Embrace in the new year). The result is an intimate and eerie collection that favours subtlety over sonic extremes, while maintaining an understated power.
Opening track “Smiling Dog” is the outlier of the album, being as it is purely instrumental and driven by keys and various ambient textures. However while the remaining nine tracks are all built around Urlo’s guitar and voice (the latter often carrying a flavour of 70s Ozzy Osbourne), the album’s opener sets the tone and vibe for the rest of the record. Though the guitar lines and vocal melodies drive this album, the textures built around each song add a great otherworldly atmosphere that somehow gives the record a very English, paganistic feel—evoking movies like The Wicker Man, or the kind of occult, sci-fi tone of early Black Sabbath records.
That being the case, it really is the songwriting that carries this album. According to Urlo, when he originally recorded these songs, he demoed versions that were much more saturated in effects. His ultimate decision to rein these sonic elements in allows the songs to have the space that they deserve.
The record’s first “song” “Two Stones” starts out with a simple two-chord verse, before the melodies of guitar and vocals twist and meander into delightfully unexpected directions. Other relevant musical reference points to the album could include Skin (the largely acoustic Swans side-project), or even Mark Lanegan—in the way the record takes an acoustic, folk core and brushes it with a layer of electronic atmospherics.
The instrumental additions to the record are not just incidental, but they link the tracks together, giving it a sense of one flowing musical movement carrying the delicate, guitar-driven song on their surface, like a haunted boat carried by a dark wave.
Aside from the eeriness that the album’s added instrumentation adds (as in the intro to “The Fluorescent Sand” for instance), Urlo often throws in some minor, “evil” sounding notes into his guitar lines—never overly dramatic, but always keeping that sense alive that there’s something wicked going on just in the periphery of this musical observation.
Perhaps the album’s most beautiful moment arrives with “Little Bird”, the layered guitars particularly effective, before the song takes a great chilling turn in its melodies towards the track’s end.
If there is a sense of evil in Songs of Abandon, it’s one that comes bound in symbolic notions like madness and the moon. The “evil” of this album evokes a kind of paganism that lurks behind the curtain of a Christian society. If there are rituals taking place, they’re nothing gaudy. Something subtle is at play here. Something that happens as the pupils dilate under a full moon, barefoot at the shore of the sea.
Buy the album here:
https://themon.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-abandon
8 / 10
TOM OSMAN
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