Jan. 13, 2010 - Issue #743: Broken Embraces

Monotonix: Riot Squad

Monotonix brings chaos and disorder

The riots which greeted Canada Day in 2001 and the ascendence of the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2006 may have receded slightly from the collective memory of this city, but the fury and chaos of those nights will almost certainly be recreated when Israel's Monotonix throws down a considerable gauntlet at New City. Known primarily for its bruise-inducing live shows, where the band often insists on playing on the floor amongst the people regardless of whether or not there is a stage, Monotonix is also a formidable band on record.

The band's newest, entitled Where Were You When it Happened?, is a fat slab of rock 'n' roll, thick and greasy, with plenty of meat on the bone. A Monotonix show isn't as much about the music, however, as it is about the spectacle—a spectacle that is absolute pandemonium from note one. That kind of energy is nearly impossible to capture onto a record, though as singer Ami Shalev explains, the band did as much as they could get away with.
"I think this one we did better than the first EP. The idea behind this record is that we recorded it the same way that we play our live shows—there's almost no overdubs and we played together with the drums and the guitar and even most of the vocal tracks are live from the live sessions. That's how we tried to translate the live energy," he says over the phone from Tel Aviv. "Of course we didn't bring total chaos into the studio because I think the studio owner would have kicked us out, but we tried to do it as close to the live shows as possible."

The band tours so much that, as Shalev explains, it almost never practises old songs, instead focusing on making new ones. With a couple written between the European tour that just ended and the Canadian tour just beginning, the band is looking forward to laying a  few down in the near future.
"Because we're touring so much the only thing we practise is new songs—we've got two new songs that we wrote when we came back from Europe ... I think we'll be recording them at the end of this tour in Chicago with Steve Albini," Shalev says, explaining that Albini's way of working seems like it will suit Monotonix's very well. "He likes to capture the energy in the most natural way the band sounds. He's legendary." V

Thu, Jan 21 (9 pm)
Monotonix
With The Get Down, Paul James Coutts & Cowls
New City, $20

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