Monarch is a local rock band from Bloomington, Illinois, that unapologetically takes charge with their music. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Blain Martin, drummer Mark Riesenberg and bassist Sam McCullers. Their sophomore album, set to release on Saturday, promises varying types of heavy music and political, frustrated themes of coming into one’s own.
The trio titled their new album “BRICK!,” and the music sure hits you like one. Every song is unique to the band, with a sense of whiplash from crazy transitions from nu metal to shoegaze-type sounds. Before all the grimy and ominous descriptors of this album, it was born to be heard live.
Multiple songs address their audience directly, engaging with them to jump, dance, kick or start throwing punches if they so please. The band wrote songs such as “Get Up!” and “Insightful Violence” specifically to get their usual audience of pumped-up college kids to move in ways that cannot be seen outside of their shows.
“We definitely write all of our songs to perform,” McCullers said. “I don’t think having them in album format is what we think of while we’re writing the songs individually.”
Rather than just having a focus on the live sound of their songs, Monarch writes about their community in particular. The track “Tally Hall” is about the Bloomington-Normal DIY scene coming together to protest noise ordinances that prohibited them from having live shows.
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“A bunch of people from the music scene went to the town hall, and everyone who was a part of it was there; it was very unifying,” Martin said.
The Tally is a popular DIY venue in Bloomington-Normal, and it was one of the few places active for bands like Monarch during this time. Lyrics like, “We gotta get the town hall looking like the Tally,” show the close-knit spirit of their community. Monarch brings the people who support it into their music, not only with mentions like this but also by writing songs that directly engage the audience.
Some of the songs on “BRICK!” take on political themes, but what makes the tracks unique is the local aspect of Monarch’s music. “Tally Hall” features another artist from Bloomington, Bigelow T, and he raps over the band’s instrumentals, adding more local flair than ever. That song is the most collaborative because of the added artist, and it evokes a sense of camaraderie with the band’s local scene.
Monarch has been around the Central Illinois scene for almost six years, and it started from adolescence, nonchalance and a crusty basement. The origin story starts like this: after McCullers was the only one to show up to Martin’s bowling alley invite, they fell into starting a band. A quick conversation about guitars turned into finding more members and making a disorganized band practice in Riesenberg’s basement.
“It was absolute chaos, man,” Riesenberg said. “It was everybody talking over each other, playing over each other, but nothing seems to work outside of just us three. We hit the trifecta, and we’ve been a triangle ever since.”
In terms of their growth as a band, “BRICK!” is meant to show the full spectrum of what the members can do with their sound in the present day. Instead of telling a story through lyrics, they do so with the track’s sounds and themes.
They add catchy basslines, distorted guitar riffs and punchy drum kicks that elevate this album from their last album, titled “Fever Dream” and released in 2023.
“It’s not a concept album in the sense that it’s telling a story,” Martin said. “It’s more of a document to show our growth as a band.”
Monarch shows what it is capable of, simply with the drastic differences between some songs on the same album. In the middle of the album, the tracks will take you somewhere ethereal and gentle with “Hue” and then punch you in the face with a much heavier and energetic song like “Killswitch.” According to the band, this was an intentional choice to highlight their range more dramatically than if there were gradual transitions.
“I try to give a good mix between highs and lows so it feels like a journey from the start to finish,” Riesenberg said.
The album ends with almost six minutes of instrumental jamming. Even though it’s the song with the least amount of lyrics, it still tells anyone listening more about the trio and how they operate.
“I think it adds the aspect of being in the room with the band,” Riesenberg said. “When you’re listening to the album, you think, ‘They’re just a group of guys messing around.’”
This nonverbal close to the track list injects even more of the trio’s personality into their new album. Odd sounds combined with a heavy guitar tone and interjections from Martin set the stage for what Monarch will do next and when it can perform the tracks live.
Although Monarch is a band from Bloomington and most of their shows are in that area, they do hop over to the Urbana house shows multiple times a semester. The trio is interested in spreading their influence and performing for new audiences more than ever, and who knows, they might get people at the University to get up at a show more than ever.
