It’s been four years since Fjoergyn’s last album, Jahreszeiten, and after listening to Monument Ende, their fourth album, neither that nor the other two preceding it will be getting a listen. An atmospheric instrumental piece with a gothic/horro/sci-fi feel to it, ‘Genesis 2.0’ starts the album off pretty well and acts as a precursor of what to expect of this album. Dramatic, intense, and brows painfully furrowed, with ‘Betonlethargie’ comes the might and the grandeur. Towering, tight and martial in momentum, what is found in this track lies at the core of the album. But very quickly, whatever measure of substance was hinted at in the opening tracks soon vanishes in a haze of pretentious and predictable pomp: build it up, break it down, loud bit, quiet bit, dramatic bit, orchestral bit, technical bit, blah blah blah. The flat drumming of ‘Leiermann’ does little to give the jarring chords the dynamic they demand and before long, the track descends into a confused mishmash of juxtaposed and sometimes overlapped parts that clash rather than complement. ‘Der Monolog Des Antichristen’ does the same, the shiny symphonic keyboard parts adding a gloss that is too blinding to be effective and the drab spoken word parts further divest the track of any depth. And so it continues for the remainder of the album’s monotonous sixty four minutes.
They do get it right a few times, such as the intro to ‘Antimensch’, but, again, that track quickly becomes as listless as the rest. By the time track seven, ‘S.I.N’, comes around, Monument Ende has proffered little to capture nor stimulate the imagination. The instrumental ‘Kyrie Eleison’ – Greek for ‘Lord Have Mercy’ (I know the feeling!) – is outstanding and the title track has its moments, but at over twelve minutes, it should. Elaborately structured, the tracks plot interesting paths yet somehow the album remains inert and, sad to say, unexciting.
5/10
Jason Guest