Interview by Taylor Younani
In the last year or two, British progressive/experimental metal quintet Monuments have transcended into becoming a full-blown entity and a full-time band, enjoying a much larger existence than what guitarist and founder John Browne initially expected it to. Also featuring the talents of vocalist Chris Barreto (ex-Periphery), Monuments released their sophomore album ‘The Amanuensis’ via Century Media Records on July 8th and are about to complete a US tour supporting Glass Cloud, Scale The Summit and others, and have announced another tour with Devin Townsend and Animals As Leaders for later this year. On their Los Angeles debut at the Lyric Theatre on August 4th as part of the Glass Cloud/Scale tour, our man Taylor Younani was in attendance to witness a fantastic performance from them, and after the set he caught up with Browne and Barreto for an in-depth chat about the tour, the lineup, the conceptual story behind the lyrics, and more. Enjoy the conversation below.
Firstly, I wanted to ask you guys how does it feel to be in the States, touring, and playing in front of crowds you’ve never played in front of before.
Chris: It’s been a roller coaster ride. Generally across the board it’s been great, a lot of good reception, obviously in little places we’ve never played before. Some unexpected surprises, in terms of venues and such, but overall the reception has been wonderful. It’s been good to have crowds that know who we are, crowds that don’t know who we are who we have to kind of win over, and it’s been both a challenge and a pleasure.
John: Same. That’s exactly what I’d say as well. Great, great crowds, been loads of fun. It’s been a bit too hot in some places…
Chris: Ugh, the AC has been dead in the van.
John: AC’s dead everywhere, man. Nah, I don’t like it.
I’m sorry to hear that, but at least it’s been getting a little bit cooler. It was 109 degrees the other day and yesterday it rained so that was a plus. Hopefully your AC will get fixed soon. You guys are touring in support of your new album ‘The Amanuensis’, which is phenomenal. I guess, since I have both of you guys here, Chris, tell me a little bit about your acclimatization to Monuments. You’ve moved around a bit…
Chris: To say the least!
To say the least indeed. Yeah, you have definitely been with a lot of bands. And for you, John, I want to know a little bit about what it’s like to have Chris onboard and play new material.
John: I hate the guy. Nah I’m kidding.
Chris: He LOVES me.
John: Yeah, basically.
Chris: I love you too, bro. Did you fart?
John: No.
Chris: It smells like shit.
John: Yeah, it was probably me. But I didn’t fart. But anyways, we were touring with Born of Osiris and Chris was filling in on vocals for a band called The HAARP Machine and within three days the rest of the band members had asked him to join my band basically, and I didn’t even know about it until the end of their talks. Everyone just really wanted Chris to take the part, basically.
Chris: Perhaps not so directly. It was more, if I can get the story correctly, Swanmi (SP) was like, “Dat. Dat nigga there. Dat one,” and I didn’t know about it… and then there was some kind of poking throughout- more so jokingly- and by the end of the tour there was a bit of discontent, I would say, with the previous guy or whatever. It seemed like the vibe was heading that way anyways, and, if the truth be told, I have another band in New York called Ever Forthright that I am still with and my focus was pretty much there, and I mean, playing with the guys every night and being a fan of Browne’s writing for quite some time…. I listened to Gnosis on the regular and have sucked his dick plenty of times. I do. I love the way he writes and so I got home and they were like, “We are gonna go ahead and do that audition process anyway,” and they put up the track “The Indulger”, at the time, which is now “I, the Creator” and so I downloaded the instrumental and kept on groovin’ out to it. I’d get really stoned and just be like, “Fuck. What is this? Let me call this dude, nigga, ‘What chu sayin’ blood?” I hit him back up and was like, “Man, if you guys are still open to me doing it I would love to lay something down.” And so I did. I did my demo of “Creator” and thankfully I got lucky and everyone really liked it and they told me I was the guy. After being on tour as well you get to learn a lot about people and, obviously, if you can be in a van with each other…
John: Except for that he is always getting on my fucking nerves.
Chris: (Laughs) But we find this weird place where like we are all such weird people in our own way, like, we are all such crazy individuals. It’s almost unbelievable how different we all are but it’s like there is this ultimate personality that we all mesh in to and that’s also like music as well. When you go on stage everything melts away and it’s just about the music. We are finding a way to make it work, yah know? Day by day.
Wow, that was incredibly deep.
John: (Laughs)
Profound! And John, how do you feel having Chris a part of the team and his dynamic on stage?
John: Everything is completely great. Like, I don’t have any problems with anything. It’s actually really nice to have someone that is on the same level as everyone else as musicians. ‘Cause musically, us four, me, Olly, Swani, Mike, have been in the band since 2011 and we just never found a connection with a vocalist until we found Chris, here.
Chris: I really lucked out.
Taylor: Everybody loves Chris.
John: Well not everybody. There is definitely one person in this venue that don’t.
Chris: Who?
John: Who do you think? His bed sheets…
Chris: Oh, dat nigga.
John: *Chuckles*
Chris: I can say that cause I’m Puerto Rican and from New York.
That’s awesome, I went to PR for vacation last summer it was phenomenal.
Chris: Ugh, it is so gorgeous. My mom just got a place down there, it’s amazing and right by the beach. It’s sick.
Dude, take me with you. I want to go back.
Chris: We can drink rum on the beach and get really fucking wasted man.
Oh man, I am so down. On another note, the new album had recurring themes both musically and lyrically, so can you talk a little bit about your inspiration for that?
John: Musically, originally I started with the inner cycle of the Samsara…
Chris: Well hold up… you were about…
John: Yeah, I was about the three poisons of the inner circle of the Samsara cycle which is represented by a pig, a bird, and a snake which are the three poisons of the human mind. One being attachment, and I honestly can’t remember the other two right now because I had a few beers (laughs). But anyways, it started out with that just ’cause I thought it was quite a good topic to write about at the time and it was what I was feeling. I presented what I wrote musically to Chris and then Chris took the Samsara theme, the whole wheel, and made his own story out of it.
Chris: So then what happen was that Browne came up with all these concepts and everything, like even all the demos have very specific names. He is a little bit more knowledgeable with some of the specific concepts or at least in terms of like the three poisons thing. Instead of wanting to do the whole google/Wikipedia thing to find out a bunch of facts or ‘cool shit’ and just write about that, I wanted to take it to a place that was a little deeper for me and do something that I had not done before, musically or in my life at all, period.
The thing is, I am just a huge fan of stories. Fiction, non-fiction, as long as something has a good story you pretty much have my attention. So I wanted to try and replicate that for the people, the listeners. So we talked about these concepts and the overall idea of the Samsara cycle being the idea of death, rebirth, etc etc, rather than take it to a literal place I used it as a lose basis to create this fictitious story. Then, in terms of the characters themselves, are a play on the word Samsara. Sam is the man character who you follow throughout the entire record and Sara who is his female counterpart and kind of like his guardian angel who comes to him at certain points and is very pivotal in his development as a person. It’s like this classic hero tale, yah know? Fallen god who doesn’t realize who he is who then goes on this life path to realize his destiny… so each song is a chapter within this character’s destiny.
Origin of Escape is when he leaves this place called Saga City. In Atlas he gets to this dock that is really far away after being chased out and, we don’t know why he is, but you just sense a very frantic atmosphere. He crosses this ocean for like four years and gets to the place where he has to deliver the Horcrux which is the third song…
John: Fourth song…
Chris: Fourth, that’s right, sorry. Oh yeah! “I, the Creator” is first. Okay, so it’s like a Tarantino film. You start at the end and then it goes back to the beginning. “I, the Creator” is technically the last chapter I always think about Origin of Escape being the first one. So “Horcrux” is the fourth song but in the succession of the story it is the third chapter, in a way. So Sam gets there and has this pendant that he’s been holding on to as he has been crossing this ocean for a long period of time. Basically, they have to sail to the end of the world and so there is this giant gate that expands over the entirety of the ocean that you can’t pass unless you deliver this something to the gatekeepers. What you need to give is something closest to your heart which is worked into the lyrics, and is basically this thing that he has been carrying with him since he was a kid that belongs to his mother who, at this point, has died. He hands over the pendant to the gatekeepers and they let him pass through this crazy, misty path in order to get to the Garden of Sankhara (SP) which is this mythical thing he has been trying to seek out all the while because there is this great mystic at the end of the Garden. The thing is, the Garden is alive and it tests you and it is divided in two places. It is divided in terms of observation, meaning you can just walk through and observe it, and it is divided in the sense that it actually puts your will to trials. And so, as he is going through the trials of the Garden he realized that there is this counterintuitive thing going on. The Garden is fighting back and manifests all of your fears and the deepest places that you are frightened of in yourself. So he is kind of fighting himself in a way, but, the more he fights he realizes the harder it gets to actually get through. So to resist is to actually make it worse. At this point Sam decides to let go and the Garden rips off his clothes and strips him naked at which point he is transported to this giant mirror at the end of the Garden where is sees himself standing. It is a metaphor for being completely open, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, and to see yourself for what you really are. That’s the only way you can pass through this place. The Garden finally sees what he is, truly, on the inside, and allows him to, at this point, pass through the mirror. He steps through the mirror and turns into this gelatinous thing and walks through and the Garden disappear.
He is all of a sudden in the middle of this green field landscape that is in the middle of this huge, expansive desert, and, low and behold, he meets the mystic who is the Alchemist (which is the song, “The Alchemist”). Sam studies with him for like 8 or 9 years and tells him about who he is supposed to be, his destiny, and the Alchemist tells Sam that he has foretold of his coming and tells Sam he has to return to his birth city and reclaim who you are.
Sam travels back, but gets lost on the misty path, and ends up in the desert but in a really fucked up place. There is this path that splits into two ways, this fork in the road. One of the paths leads towards this village and the other has these really creepy looking rocks, think “The Hills Have Eyes”, and off in the distance, he sees this creature that is making all sorts of gnarly noises and shit. The whole thing with this counterintuitive thing, this small theme in the story, is that naturally you would want to go towards the village but, and hear we move onto “Quasimodo”, you don’t want to judge by appearance. So he actually goes down the other path towards the rocks and realizes the creature is not a bad guy and actually tells Sam to follow him. He follows the creature into the cave where he lives and it’s got all of these little rugs and books, a small fire, and so he puts his hand out and Sam takes a chance on that. He puts his hand out also and when the two touch they begin communicating psychically and tells Sam the story of how he came to be the Quasimodo. Essentially, he was one of the students of the Alchemist who had gone down the path and come out the wrong way. He ended up at the village but the village is full of really fucked up people that basically used him. They were cannibals and cut pieces of his flesh to consume but kept him alive the whole time and completely deformed him. They cut out his tongue which is why he can’t speak. He eventually escapes and has been trying to warn people the entire time.
John: There is one thing. There is a whole story about this coming, it’s just that we are weighing… there is actually going to be a whole book about the album so this is where this is all coming from.
Chris: Yeah, that is my intention. I would LOVE to actually put this out to accompany the whole thing. Cause as I was writing it this was all pouring through my imagination, and is in many ways still growing in my head. But, so then he is like, “Okay, this is my story,” and so Sam psychically communicates his story as well and his experiences. The Quasimodo alerts Sam that he knew of his coming and tells him that he can help him on his journey.
They do this weird psychic melding thing where they use their energy and the Quasimodo transports Sam all the way back through space and time and he ends up back in Saga City which is the place that he left, at this point, like 15 years ago or something like that. At this point, he is like a 29 year old man. He left Saga City as a kid and came back as a man. So he stands at Saga City and the song “Saga City” is basically him recounting his childhood through the city and it gives you all the backstory and everything. He talks about how he and Sara were these star crossed lovers and how they found this book at the bottom of an ancient well that had these mythical elements, all because Saga City itself is built on stories. That’s why it lives, that’s how it has come to be, and what Sam doesn’t realize yet is that his life is bound to it (although he will find this out in the future.) After finding this book the city comes under the corruption of this evil tyrant, I always think about the Emperor from Star Wars, and he starts to influence the city in a very vile way and the dude controls dark energy so he has legions of demons at his side. There is one demon in particular that he relies on to influence people, one of the people being his father. His father is then influenced by the Emperor to get the book because the book itself is powerful and they want to use it for dark purposes. They find out that Sam and Sara have the book and try to steal it from them. The ultimately succeed, but then Sam and Sara find a way to get it back, run away, and destroy the book. In the process, that’s where we are left with “Origin of Escape” which details why he left in the first place: they destroyed the book, Sara took him to the edge of the city, and was like, “You have to go. I will find my own way here. But you have to leave, right now.” So they leave and that is the last time the two see each other.
The whole story is recounted as Sam is standing on the edge of Saga City at the place that he left so many years before, and so for the first time in that amount of time, he goes back into Saga City.
That takes you to the song “Jinn”, and at this point Saga City is just filled with this air of evil and as if there is a plague that hangs in the air. The people look sickly and it’s obviously torn with chaos. With the hopes that he can maybe find Sara or some goodness again, Sam goes back to the well where they discovered the book but the well has become inhabited by the demon, which is why the song is called “Jinn”; it is synonymous with demon. The thing that the Alchemist said was that the demon must not be allowed to speak otherwise he will actually turn you. Point being, the demon, when he speaks, physically manipulates space and your thoughts are partially physically, so in that sense he will control your mind just with words. He tries his best not to let him speak, but the demon manages to and begins mixing lies with truth. He tells Sam that Sara and his father have died, essentially telling him that when he left, Sara was captured and brought before the tyrant and ultimately tortured and killed by the father. This revelation brings out darkness within Sam, because then not only is he lamenting on his loss, but the influence of the demon is starting to take hold and he doesn’t realize how powerful he really is…that he is this Supreme Being, so to speak.
The demon, thinking he has won Sam over, takes him before the tyrant and that leads to the song “I, the Destroyer”. He gets to the tyrant eventually and this rage is building up inside of Sam and the chaos begins to take over his being and so they think they can control him, but at some point there is a breaking point and he becomes this God that he was meant to become, as was foretold all along. The thing is, it’s more powerful than anything. It goes beyond good and evil, he literally becomes pure chaos. Sam kills the emperor, and, this is my favorite part, he eats the demon. He consumes him, and becomes this whirlwind of destruction: maelstroms, weather, energy, everything. He begins to destroy Saga City. As the whole thing falls apart, buildings crumble, the life of Saga City is dying but since Sam is bound to Saga City himself, he begins to die as well.
That takes us to the last song, “Samsara”, which you see Sam phasing in and out of reality, lying in rubble watching the city. The destruction is already too far gone, in fact it’s so fucking intense that it actually rips a hole in space and time and so everything is kind of being sucked into this weird wormhole or whatever and so he is waning in and out of reality. Off in the distance and through the haze he sees this figure walking towards him, rather floating actually with wings and blood dripping from the feet and he comes to realize that it is Sara. Sara came back in this angelic form and what she has in one arm is the book that they read together so long ago. The thing is that there were chapters from the end of the book missing, but this time they were actually there. So the two read through the book one more time together and read the final chapters, and at this point, Sam realizes that he is supposed to be this God of Harmony, the Creator, so to speak. The thing is, it had to be chosen by him; a sincere decision that only he can make himself and nobody else can tell him what to do…it has to come from inside. And so Sara gives him a kiss and just disappears into the air and is like, “Make your choice.”
This takes us back to the first song, “I, the Creator” where same sacrifices his physical being and everything else he has in him to recreate Saga City and so then it’s like this whole crazy thing of self-discovery, becoming that, putting the story together, buildings are coming together crazy shit is going on and there is finally a huge white flash like from a movie. All of a sudden he opens his eyes to when he was 12 years old and the first time he heard the song from the book itself because it puts out a harmony that only the chosen one is capable of hearing. That was the first time he heard that song, thus starting the whole cycle of the album itself. The thing is it a time loop, forever frozen, forever happening. That is how it circles itself and that is the story.
John: It’s a long ole story.
It’s a long story. I had other questions to ask that were kind of dumb you know like about favorite bands or the World Cup, but I don’t really feel like we need to cover any of the stuff anymore because I want this to sink in. I have goosebumps, my friends listening have goosebumps. I have done a lot of interviews and I have sat with people for about 15 minutes but you know they have never really put that sort of stuff in front of me. They always talk about the mechanics of just the music or about tour life, but they limit themselves. This is one of the reasons why you guys are one of my favorite bands; I’ll be candid right now. The respect is immense. This is why we listen to you and it was an honor listening to that story and to hear about how you and John worked together on this.
John: My explanation was really short in comparison, because I knew Chris’s was going to be super long (laughs)
Not at all. It was perfect because I am a Religious Studies and Black Studies major at school and this was the best place to be and the best story to listen to.
Chris: You are?! No way. That is fucking sick. You know the funny thing is that actually Browne has created a landscape for me to explore my imagination and I mean that (looking at Browne), I mean that.
John: The thing is that next time I want to try it vice versa. I want him to give me a story that I write to. He’s actually got it but we won’t talk about it right now.
Chris: I do have a prequel, sequel, whatever you want to call it and oh my god is it so cool. Its soooooo cool.
John: Don’t say anything yet (laughs).
Chris: It’s so awesome though I fucking love it.
John: I’m going try it vice versa now and write off his story because obviously I came up with a lot of the titles of the record based on what, even if the actual thought process that I had behind it wasn’t the same, it was around the same theme. Like the reason Horcrux became Horcrux was because of the pendant and how the soul becomes trapped…you’ve seen Harry Potter right? So the soul gets trapped in an object and you will always do that with possessions of family members who have passed and you will always associate your lost ones with these pieces of what become your ‘self’. Regardless of if what I wrote about wasn’t exactly spoken on Chris’s part, it was based on the same themes.
John: There are a lot of motifs in the music. If you listen to it closely there a lot of repeating parts.
Chris: There are things that are connected, lyrics that repeat, and if you also pay attention really closely at the end of “Samsara” there is a gong that rings out in the key of B flat which was purposefully put there because it is a tri-tone away from the actually key of the song itself which is the key of E; that being the old school devil note which creates this ‘tension’. The key of E dissipates and the gong just takes over which is this ringing B flat note which, as it rings out, brings us the beginning of the album again which is the key of B flat, hence completing the cycle musically, lyrically, thematically, etc.
John: There are a lot of different themes in the actual album. I could be here all night and all day talking about which themes relate to what but I’m not going to.
On that note guys, thank you for such an open and imaginative interview. I loved the story and it is obvious that there are big things to come from Monuments. This is your first US tour and we are looking forward to seeing you again.
Chris: Likewise, thanks a lot man.
John: Absolutely, buddy. Thank you.
Related:
Gig Review: Glass Cloud, Scale The Summit, Monuments & Others Play At The Lyric
Monuments links: website | facebook | twitter
Devin Townsend/Animals As Leaders/Monuments North American tour dates:
Nov. 17 – Seattle, WA – Studio Seven
Nov. 18 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom *
Nov. 19 – Kelowna, BC – Level Nightclub *
Nov. 21 – Edmonton, AB – Union Hall
Nov. 22 – Calgary, AB – The Gateway *
Nov. 23 – Saskatoon, SK – O’Brians Event Centre
Nov. 24 – Winnipeg, MB – The Garrick Centre *
Nov. 25 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
Nov. 26 – Chicago, IL – Metro *
Nov. 28 – Detroit, MI – St. Andrews Hall *
Nov. 29 – Cleveland, OH – House Of Blues
Nov. 30 – Toronto, ON – Phoenix Concert Theatre *
Dec. 1 – Montreal, QC – Club Soda
Dec. 3 – Baltimore, MD – Rams Head Live *
Dec. 4 – Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero
Dec. 5 – Worcester, MA – The Palladium *
Dec. 6 – New York, NY – Webster Hall
Dec. 8 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage *
Dec. 10 – San Antonio, TX – Backstage Live
Dec. 11 – Dallas, TX – Gas Monkey Bar N Grill *
Dec. 13 – Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre
Dec. 14 – Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theater *
Dec. 15 – Mesa, AZ – The Nile Theatre
Dec. 16 – Los Angeles, CA – The Mayan *
Dec. 17 – San Francisco, CA – The Regency Ballroom