Mono

Tokyo, Japan's Mono are a peculiar group. While most bands offer up their sincerest and most genuine recordings in their infancy and spend the rest of their careers trying desperately to rediscover their youthful energy, Mono's trajectory is quite the opposite. Their early recordings were a visceral homage to their past and present heroes; documents of a band boasting an impressive symphony of sound in spite of their relatively small line-up. These days, Mono have become one of the most passionately aggressive rock bands of the last decade, with their soaring crescendos, titanic sheets of distortion and dark melodies executed with the delicacy and precision of a paper crane.