When this album landed on my desk, I thought "Oh no, yet another pretentiously titled post-rock album". After all, this year I've had to sit through piles of pompous post-rock musical masturbation, like the recent albums from Esmerine and Broken Hands for Brilliant Minds. It's almost enough to make one want to forsake the entire genre forever, but upon listening to this album, I immediately repented and learnt that there's a lot of life left in this genre yet.

The most obvious comparisons that one could make to Mono are Mogwai circa "Young Team" and Explosions In The Sky. The music is primarily guitar-based, and while various effects and flourishes are used, they never take attention away from the guitar melodies. The songs are also all completely instrumental, and they've taken the loud-soft dynamic to extremes that even the above-mentioned haven't reached, meaning that the first time you listen to this album, you'll probably leave with a headache.

Opening track 16.12 is a perfect example of how the band has taken that dynamic further than anyone has taken it before. The first six minutes of the song are quiet, calm exercises in subtle melody and restrained songwriting. Then, totally without any warning, an overdriven guitar that sounds more like a malfunctioning jet engine blasts into the mix, abandoning all pretence of delicacy. From here, the riffs get progressively more epic, leaving you breathless as the song finally ends after eleven minutes, particularly if you turned your stereo up loud so that you could hear the first section of the song.

Patience is essential for enjoying "Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shine". Songs like Halycon (Beautiful Days) stretch past the eight minute mark, and they're not even the longest pieces here. On the other hand, songs like A Thousand Paper Cranes are somehow literate, despite the fact that they have no words at all associated with them.

Of course, just being literate and intelligent is no guarantee of actually being listenable, and this album at times gets to intelligent that it's hard to actually listen to. It's never pretentious or pompous in the way that it does things, but the musical themes that it expresses are so epic as to require a fair bit of concentration. Listening to this whole album in one sitting might be a bit of a tall order, given the constant loud/soft switching, which becomes painfully predictable after a short time. Where it does shine is in careful, premeditated listening, that way the intent of the band isn't overshadowed by the immense size of the musical concepts that they are creating.

Mono have crafted a nice album here, but one that is trapped by its own limited scope. Despite the band's enormous talent, there's only so much that you can do with alternating periods of subtle melody and raging noise. Perhaps if on their next album, they supplement their abilities with a wider musical palette, they'll be onto a real winner.