Located in the far reaches in the south of France lies Bayonne, a small City untouched by modern architecture and home to one of the slowest, heaviest and loudest funeral doom metal bands Europe has to offer. They call themselves Monarch! and they ascended to this Earth in the year of 2004. Drawing comparisons to the likes of heavy weights Khanate, Burzum, Corrupted and the Melvins, Monarch! are a unique band with the pure intent on creating blood curdling feedback drenched physical sound through the use of insane volume and low end frequencies, oh, and with a wall of sweet vintage amps. Clearly the focal point of the band, Monarch! are fronted by the very beautiful and ultra guttural screaming banshee Emily Bresson, on bass we have MicHell Hammer, who single handedly designs all of Monarch! artwork, typography and imagery. On guitar we have Shiran Fabrice and on drums Robert MacManus, formally of Melbourne, Australia’s Grey Daturas.

In the words of Monarch!, let it be said! Monarch! unleash a slow motion avalanche of impossibly glacial, blackened sludge and hypnotic feedback, each song a series of epic tarpit riffage stretched out eternally over lumbering drums and the cavernous rumble of speaker cabinets. Over these yawning expanses of black void appears the demonic, throat-shredding shrieks and ghostly singing of Emilie, whose petite appearance belies one of the harshest throats in the underground Doom spectrum. Beyond heavy. Monarch!'s mega-crawling ambient doom/drone/sludge follows in the grand tradition of fellow tarpit adventurers Melvins, Corrupted, Noothgrush, and Black Sabbath, and accompany their music with an iconoclastic design style that decorates their material with deceptively cute imagery drawing from the collective influence of Sanrio, Japanese animation, European graffiti, weirdo hardcore, and skateboard culture.

Discography:

2004: 'Advance Tape' (Tape) None 2005: 'Monarch' (2CD) - Solitude 2006: 'Elysiüm Monarch Split' (Split CD) - Throne & Amanita 2006: 'Speak Of The Sea' (LP) - Throne Records 2007: 'Dead Men Tell No Tales' (2CD) - Crucial Blast & Heathen Skulls 2007: 'Die Tonight' (LP) - Throne Records 2008: Dawn of the Catalyst - Grey Daturas / Monarch split LP & CD - 20 Buck Spin & Throne 2008: Mer Morte (LP) - Throne Records 2009: Australian Tour 7" - Heathen Skulls 2010: Sabbat Noir LP & CD - Heathen Skulls 2010: NEW LP - Recording in June with Sanford Parks in Chicago!