14 billions years of growth
Recycled star stuff from host to host
Endless cycle of life and death
Stars to oceans and babies breath
In an era overshadowed by hollow leaders and ethical decay, Seattle’s Only Monsters issue a potent rallying cry against our collective disillusionment with their arresting new compilation album, Past, Present, and Obsolescence. The title itself echoes a chilling mantra, a sharp indictment of contemporary politics and humanity’s primal descent into self-serving chaos.
The compilation is a collection of their ambitious triptych of EPs—ONE (August 2024), TWO (January 2025), and THREE (June 2025)—a shadowed odyssey into mystery, mythology, and gloom. Each installment plunges deeper into the dark recesses of the imagination, weaving together arcane narratives and brooding atmospherics to form the cohesive whole of Past, Present, and Obsolescence. This trilogy emerges from a lineage of prior works—most notably the self-titled Only Monsters EP (July 2023)—but here they scale their oeuvre from spellbinding post-punk to gothic grandeur and beyond.
Channeling the brooding atmospheres of Chameleons, the apocalyptic intensity of Killing Joke, and the poetic eloquence of Anne Clark, Only Monsters wield their music like a scalpel, dissecting our societal maladies with merciless precision. Each track on this collection reverberates with urgency and uneasy clarity, bridging post-punk ferocity with gothic sensibilities. The result is a body of work released in the past year that confronts listeners head-on, unsettling yet irresistible, as it explores existential dread, historical decay, and the delicate balance between self-acceptance and self-destruction.
From the outset, Eye For An Eye thrusts listeners into dystopian gloom, pairing Chameleons-esque textures with Pixies-tinged howls, portraying humanity trapped in cycles of deception and merciless violence: inevitable, inescapable. The reflective pace of Lessons In Obsolescence drifts through spectral, Cure-inflected guitar lines and ghostly vocal arcs, its melodies imbued with dreamlike despair. Here, history’s crumbling monuments become potent metaphors for the fleeting, ephemeral nature of all human grandeur. Nothing endures; everything fades into quiet decay, unnoticed and unmourned.
Gods of Dreamland plunges into eerie depths with its sinister bass pulses and spectral echoes, vocals resounding like distant spirits whispering down castle corridors. The track evokes an unknowable universe suspended between sleep and wakefulness, where ancient mysteries and forbidden truths linger on the threshold of consciousness, tempting yet perilous. In the solemn elegance of Silhouettes, the band navigates a delicate neo-folk reverie, vocals sweeping gorgeously over stark, slow rhythms reminiscent of Dead Can Dance. Here shadows and faded memories haunt the present, carrying the weight of inherited regret and concealed histories…unnerving reminders of the past’s enduring sway.
The Endless unfolds as a sparse meditation, minimalist beats and droning synth textures subtly recalling Joy Division’s bleakest moments. The song examines human existence as cosmic poetry, a ceaseless cycle of birth and death devoid of mythological comforts, underscoring a yearning to understand oneself through tangible truth rather than faith. The Nightmare Or The Dream cloaks gothic drama with shimmering Omnichord accents, conjuring Pulp’s theatrical elegance filtered through the atmospheric melancholy of The Chameleons. This track is an existential fever-dream, blurring reality with the surreal as it questions perception, identity, and the fragile divide between terror and enchantment.
Next, the sluggish, hypnotic A Lullaby shifts to introspective spoken word, drifting through shimmering shoegaze textures. With candid introspection and a wry look at life, it offers solace in the embrace of flawed authenticity, underscoring a feeling of vulnerable, yet irreverent liberation.
Petrichor emerges as a spectral synth dirge, underpinned by brittle machine pulses and the spectral allure of Chameleons-inflected guitars. The vocals resonate as if from a forgotten aristocrat hidden deep within an attic’s gloom, haunted by faded grandeur. Taking its name from the scent of rain after prolonged drought—a poetic collision of earth (“petra”) and the gods’ own lifeblood (“ichor”)—the track evokes cleansing renewal amidst inevitable decay. The heavens bleed, washing away humanity’s sins, leaving only the earth to bear witness and endure.
Soothsayer drifts into shadowy lounge territory, a darkly decadent cabaret inflected with new wave melancholia and soulful echoes of a solitary crooner performing in a cocktail lounge at the precipice between worlds. It’s an elegy for human desperation, recalling ancient rituals where charlatans whispered false comforts into the ears of the lost. When the pillars crumble and certainties dissolve into dust, it asks with chilling clarity: to whom shall we turn for salvation when only lies remain?
Listen to Past, Present, and Obsolescence below and order the album here.
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