Iron Monkey hasn’t tweaked its sound to any great extent – don’t expect any pop interludes or power ballads. Yet an evolution of some sort was undergone between the release of the self-titled debut and this sophomore effort. For lack of a better description, it seems as if someone laced those gorilla-sized joints so adored by the band with something a bit more substantial, something to put a spring in the shock of the band’s snail-paced delivery. It’s the difference between old-school and new-school Godzilla: while the former trudges its way through the streets and citizens of metropolitan New York City, stomping any structure stuck in its impromptu path, the sleek reconceptualization of the latter races through the same streets and alleys at immeasurable speeds, breathing radioactive fire in one direction while leveling whole city blocks with each swipe of its serpentine tail.

But to maintain that Our Problem is faster than the debut and to leave it at that would ultimately stiff the devastating progressions the band has made. To elaborate on the previous paragraph, the Godzilla metaphor is an apt one: no longer is the band “one dimensional” in its heaviness, inflicting a 40-minute, aural equivalent of pulling teeth. Now, it has developed a knack for sonically pummeling the listener with a variety of audible torture techniques. The CD kicks off on a cocaine high – the grooving and fast “Bad Year” – and moves through more of the same – “Supagorgonizer” and my personal favorite “Boss Keloid” – and ultimately brings the CD to a momentary close with the slow rot of the 20 minute “9 Joint Spiritual Whip,” which closes with a seemingly infinite, mind-numbing riff that finally screeches to an earth-shattering halt against a wall of white noise. The encore consists of two hidden tracks, the first a white-trash homage to the band on the merits of its stellar ability to smoke pot – comic relief, I suppose – and the finale, a prodding, pounding instrumental that hammers out the same note for over 13 minutes. A repeated fist to the nuts. Iron Monkey’s way of reminding us not to forget who we’re fucking with.

So where do we go from here? First, someone needs to get Hollywood on the phone and convince them to give King Kong the makeover they gave Godzilla. And then, Hollywood needs to contact the only band that could adequately supply the soundtrack for the ensuing primate carnage, and I think we all know who that is.
 

It was quite an introduction, let me assure you.

I made my way through the utterly bad (that pastiche of shit called "Strangled" by Ultraviolence), the incredibly good (The Haunted's "Undead"), and now it was time for the proverbial ugly, I suppose, track 11 entitled "Big Loader" by the focus of this review, Iron Monkey.  As the track opened with the downtuned guitars stomping out an earthshaking intro, I recall thinking, "Hey, this sounds quite cool."

And then the vocals kicked in.

Perhaps you are assuring yourself, "I can handle extreme vocalists; I'm into black metal."  While I am certainly no expert on the black metal scene, I have a feeling that Johnny Morrow, the bands lead "singer," would make the fiercest black metalist shudder and convulse in terror.  This is not a fingernails-on-the-chalkboard sort of vibe.  That's much to tame.  Think of a larger-than-life circular saw ripping its way through mountains of scrap metal.  Sparks flying.  Metal on metal.  Or to paraphrase one reviewer's description of the Morrow vocal delivery I read some time ago, 'Imagine the sound you would make if your knee were suddenly knocked up into your shoulder'.

Rewind to the aforementioned first listen.  My first verbal response was, "What the fuck is this!?"  My wife, usually extremely tolerant of my metal tastes, kept walking by with a look of horrified disbelief smeared across her face.  Yet I could not turn it off.  It became a personal challenge.  I would make it through unscathed and unscarred and live to tell about it.  And before the band finished trudging through the five minutes and two seconds of "Big Loader," I was unabashedly (meat)hooked.

After the initial indoctrination, loving Iron Monkey is easy.  You see, the band takes its sweet, painful  time in its delivery and appears to be in no hurry to move to the succeeding track,  the songs steamrolling most of the time at a snail's crawl.  I will resort to the numerous Black Sabbath/early Eyehategod comparisons that are often ascribed to the band's music, a doom-laden, low-ended affair, and add what appears to be another influence, the writings of William S. Burroughs.  Iron Monkey includes what appear to be lyrics penned using some sort of cut-up, avant garde method of writing, but it is one of those cases that despite the luxury of printed lyrics, it is still damn near impossible to follow along with the vocals as they are screamed:  "gas disease machine/cunt-fraud/deaths during rock magic/fetered arms reach for blackened penis/separation of delusion and cum/soil disorder/survival of the shittest."  And these are the first lines of the album, from the track "Fink Dial."

What you might not expect after reading this review is my final analysis of the music of Iron Monkey:  it is strangely catchy.  Most of the song's intros usually start fairly low-key with a single guitar, give you enough time to catch the beat, and then pummel you with the onslaught of the band in its entirety, without losing, surprisingly, the groove with which the track began.

For all of the reasons stated above, I sincerely believe that Iron Monkey is one of the freshest stenches to rear its ugly monkey head in metal for quite some time.  And that, my friends, is good.  Ugly belongs in metal.