Album Review: The Beautiful Monument - I'm The Reaper

Every band can stop now, the album of the year is here. The Beautiful Monument are about to shut down the industry with their sensational new album, I’m The Reaper. Angst-ridden anthems, powerful ballads, techno-laced alt-rock, synthesised depths, beauty and brains – this is the band with a gift that keeps on giving – finding words to do this album justice is difficult, this is a release you simply must listen to to fully understand.

That, indeed, is the unmatchable power The Beautiful Monument have compared to their contemporaries. Their raw songwriting talent and natural prowess for multi-textured instrumentation have been so well refined, every note does the talking and pulls heavy on your heartstrings. There’s just something that TBM simply get. Heck, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was being reviewed by an angsty teen, but it’s true; The Beautiful Monument are an everyman band whose powerful renditions of love, loss, and every melancholic experience out there are best explained with riveting rhythms and powerful lyrics.

Though there’s only seven notes in the scale, The Beautiful Monument have put them together in sequences that crash through tales of life’s afflictions and adventures with a creative manipulation that gifts each track with a standalone character and no evidence of a mess made. Raw, clever, concise, distinctive, this is a band who have an unprecedented talent for their craft.

Like a really great film you watch over and over again, with every listen you’ll discover new, wonderful elements that keep the magic inspired. Opener Give Up is an almighty banger as it breaks down the gates of the powerful album, while Deceiver, slightly gentler, is stunning and heart-breaking in its lyrics. Stay, with its synth intro, is unbearably beautiful, and Cursed is the kind of angst-ridden track that’ll make you curl in a vulnerable ball of emotions. Standout track Kintsugi plays with punk-rock undertones without The Beautiful Monument running dry on ideas for their signature sound, and shows off some very impressive drum runs to boot. If there’s a track by an Aussie band that stands to be an anthem exemplary of a resilient spirit, it’s this song. The feels are real, all of them, from elated drifting on gritty guitars to angry throwdowns, to soaring sensations of hope in some truly powerful vocals. Listen carefully and heavy plodding on piano keys add some earthy tones to the tracks, not only rounding out their depth of character, but pushing home a point that nothing in life, or this band, is one-dimensional.

Major-minor shifts, bends and breaks in sound and emotion, there’s so much to unpack in I’m The Reaper, and The Beautiful Monument prove they are indeed a beautiful fixture in the Australian music scene. The melodic lovechild of Flyleaf, In Flames and Sleeping With Sirens after a scientifically improbable threesome, this album is a major contestant for heavy release of the year and should win all the awards.