MONARCH OF MONSTERS

If you'd told me a few years ago that a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanmusic album would end up being my favourite album of 2024 I don't really know what my reaction would have been, but I suppose it is true that your favourite anything chooses you, rather than the other way around. Despite not having seen the cartoon that the vast majority of her music is inspired by, I have been following the work of Zelda Trixie Lulamoon, better known as Vylet Pony, ever since someone recommended me her majestic 2022 progressive pop anthem "I've Still Got Something To Teach You". As I found out, that song was one step in a process of broadening her stylistic horizons from her brostep and electropop roots to ranges which by the time of the release of the album I'm reviewing now had already expanded to include hip-hop, industrial rock, ambient and free noise. Monarch Of Monsters, a bombastic progressive rock epic with influences from alternative rock and metal, post-rock, noise rock and no wave, feels more than leftfield even within that context: it feels like an evolution beyond all this. Mistake it not for some gimmicky attempt to break into a new genre: this is an earnest and heartfelt artistic statement from someone with genuine knowledge and love for the prog craft.

The poppy and colourful nature of most of Vylet Pony's previous works contrasts dramatically with the relentlessly dour and oppressive nature of not only the pure musical content of Monarch Of Monsters but also the album's concept, an elaborate fantasy storyline (further expanded on in a 78 pages long novella that accompanies the album) following the journey of an anthropomorphic wolf and her encounters with all manner of violence, cults, religious conflict, betrayal, death and reincarnation, all described in harrowing detail and apparently serving as allegories for traumatic events from the artist's own troubled life. It's well written and adds more weight to the album's cathartic moments, but it is also a lot to take in and a lot of it is quite over the top and graphic (as if that needed clarification with an album cover like that, LOL) and, if I'm being honest, isn't something I would readily recommend reading through unless one has the stomach for it.

But a narrative concept can only carry an album so far, so how's the music? Well... it's kind of breathtakingly beautiful every step of the way through, from the melancholic blue piano notes that open "Pest" and develop into a wailing, heavy, guitar- and organ-led rock waltz, all the way up to its mirror track "Rest Now, Little Wolf" at the album's end, a serene stately showstopper which is also the only song on the album in a major key. A delightful spectrum of sounds can be found in between these two moments, with some of the calmer tracks ("Vitality Glitch", "Huntress") hearkening back to the old moody electronic style within the newly established rock context, and other tracks ("Princess Cuckoo", "And As Her Howl Echoed Until Eventide...") going straight off the abstract noise deep end. The instrumentation and arrangements remain very rich throughout and Lulamoon's singing demonstrates remarkable skill, varying between clean soulful vocals, desperate gut-wrenching near-screams (showcased to particularly poignant emotional effect on the amazing "Survivor's Guilt"), heartrending sobs and exhausted near-whispers.

To me, the album's sixth track, "The Wallflower Equation", stands especially tall: it is a 12-minute long steadily paced Mars Volta-ish groove mostly based on a single synth bassline, gradually embellished with ornaments, riffs, solos and interjections on distorted guitar, clarinet, saxophone and synthesizer array before winding down into a mournful duet for bass and acoustic guitar. However, the 22-minute "Sludge" is certainly something that must be mentioned as well: this brings more to mind artists like Swans and Sprain and weaves together several different sections into an awe-demanding whole, beginning as an ominous hypnotic darkwave march swelling in intensity and culminating after a brief atmospheric interlude and a scream of SINNER BE DAMNED into thumping dissonant guitar riffage which then makes way for a prolonged frenetic heavy rock jam with more synth and sax solos before seemingly collapsing from fatigue.

For some lesser artists an album like this would be a career-defining accomplishment to be imitated but never equalled. For Vylet Pony it is only proof that no challenge is too great for her and that the sky is the limit for what we might expect from her in the future.