Review Summary: Rage against codependecy
Mondrary is one of the many bubbling bands rising from the recent screamo movement, in a world where sharing music is easier than ever. Where talented kids still in or fresh out of high school can come together and show everyone that they mean business.
No Better Than Man is such a release, buried in the indie nature of DIY works, but a shining jewel nonetheless.
The dissonant mathy guitar licks herald the start of the album after the intro track, but it soon becomes apparent what makes this band stand out from the rest: vocalist Amaya Nino. Her tortured, raw shrieks perfectly sell the emotions of this album, with lyrics all about a toxic codependent relationship. Intense self-loathing, hatred of your partner, but also an inability to move forward, a desire to hold on to those fleeting moments of good emotions that crop up in the ocean of pain. While the music is mainly mathcore-inspired screamo on the edge of emoviolence, the songs know when to flow to quieter parts accordingly. While Amaya is certainly a scream queen, she does have pleasant cleans reminiscent of pop punk.
Amaya doesn’t solely carry the album, either. Guitarists Rehman Wada and Abraham Ragan know how to do tasteful mathy riffs that don’t overindulge in the chaos. Bassist Connor Hargis can lay down some nice counterpoints, and drummer Noah Mills shows he means business behind the kit. The theme and progression of the album shows maturity beyond their years. Blistering rage and brooding melancholy slowly give way to creeping dread in the album’s short run time. The only downside to this album are the answering machine interludes that break up the flow, but they fit with the album’s concept of the narrator trying to both hold on to the relationship and leave it. They’re not solely filler, as there is a callback on the final track. The song Bitter signals this shift, where the lyrics show the narrator taking responsibility for their part in the abusive relationship instead of solely blaming their partner. With the last two songs, grimly titled At the End of a Hammer Click; Catharsis, it’s the final attempt to wrench herself free of limerence, the ending lyrics showing the narrator trying to distance herself from her partner, getting pulled back but pulling herself back further. Amaya really puts her all into these songs, delivering one of the best performances of the entire genre.
But, as these indie screamo bands spontaneously come into existence, the passion and volatility of the music appears to echo in their fate. They come together, make their statement, and then dissolve just as quickly as they arrived. Mondrary may have befallen this same pattern, though nothing is currently stated. While I do hope I’m getting one-guyed by a comment, it matters not:
No Better Than Man, be it a titanic statement of things to come or a towering mausoleum, will stand as one of the strongest screamo outputs of the 2020s.
