Vylet Pony - Monarch of Monsters

Will this be the thread that finally destroys my reputation here? I don't care; we need to talk about this album.
Monarch Of Monsters, released less than a month ago, is the most recent album by American artist Zelda Lulamoon under the alias Vylet Pony and is a bombastic concept album revolving around an epic fantasy storyline serving as both a metaphor for complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and a deliberation on metaphysical themes. The music is among some of the most captivating I've heard this year: my favourite is The Wallflower Equation, a 12-minute long steadily paced groove with woodwinds, piano and distorted guitar that starts off sounding like The Mars Volta before gradually growing more abstract and experimental while building up to its catharsis all the way. 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 moves through several different sections incorporating elements from darkwave, alternative metal, post-rock, avant-prog and no wave while still weaving together a coherent breathtaking whole.
Some shorter tracks like the opener Pest continue the melancholic heavy rock vibe while others (Princess Cuckoo, And As Her Howl Echoed Until Eventide...) go straight off the noise rock deep end, but there are also calmer, reflective moments played on acoustic guitar and the closer Rest Now, Little Wolf is a serene majestic progressive showstopper that directly quotes Genesis's Afterglow (there are quite a few lyrical quotes from Genesis sprinkled throughout here, and the artist herself has frequently cited The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway as a profound influence on her work in the past).

Something for everyone! So what's the problem then? Well, there isn't really one except that I felt the need to lay out all the previous information to keep people from walking out the door upon glancing the immediate context of it: not only does this album sport a not-so-safe-for-work cover featuring anthropomorphic animals in the nude but also, in spite of that fact and in spite of the rather brutal nature of the lyrics and the story they tell, this is an album of fan music dedicated to (and apparently set in the universe of) the My Little Pony franchise. Moreover, while this artist has been kind of all over the place stylistically in the past year or so, most of her previous albums fall squarely within the EDM and electropop genres. In short, this is about as left field as a prog magnum opus could possibly come out of.

THE ALBUM IN ALL ITS GLORY (I've bolded the standout tracks in the opening paragraph)

So what do we do with an album like this, and how do we give it the recognition that it deserves? Merely forwarding this artist as a suggestion to the Crossover Prog team would feel really weird considering her stylistic background but would in a vacuum also rob this project of the context behind its nomination, which is that this is in my opinion one of the most significant rock albums of 2024. So I'll just post this in this subforum and let the community decide on how to interpret this.

Edited by Mirakaze - December 09 2024 at 15:24

not-so-safe-for-work cover featuring anthropomorphic animals

That's my thing!