Throughout their twenty-five year career, MONO have demonstrated time and time again that they are masters of duality. Their best material finds them unifying the gorgeous orchestration of their “neo-classical” brand of post rock and bombastic catharsis that sometimes stretches into metal territory. Their tours have found them accompanied by a full orchestra while sharing bills with the likes of envy and Boris, and those facts never seem to contradict eachother.
On 2014’s two-part release of The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness, the Japanese masters give each element of their sound a little more room to breathe, spending one album prioritizing their more orchestral ambitions and the other indulging their most fiery impulses. While the album’s were released separately, I’ve found that the best way to fully appreciate each record is to think of it as a single work—which is made easier by this release that combines them in a single gatefold, which turns the two covers into a single piece of album art.
Obviously, the bifurcation isn’t precise. There’s plenty of darkness on The Last Dawn and plenty of prettiness on Rays of Darkness—and this being MONO, the prettiest parts sometimes have the most melancholy, such as opener “The Land Between Tides/Glory” or the immensely moving “Cyclone.” However, the latter disc is entirely devoid of the string section that so frequently accompanies the group. It’s a subtle timbre shift—the strings have almost always served to support the melodies played on guitar—but their absence serves to accentuate the bleakness of the second group of songs.
For all the middle ground, there are plenty of moments where each record holds steady to its dedicated facet of MONO’s sound. “Elysian Castles” finds the group at their most delicate, a simple piano melody repeating among strings and tremolo guitars throughout an eight-minute runtime that never explodes the way you’d expect. “Where We Begin” is major-keyed and triumphant, recalling early works like “Finlandia.” Finally, the title track closes out The Last Dawn with as signature a MONO track as you can find, reverb-drenched tremolo guitar bouncing against a string-section drone and clean arpeggios for the opening section before turning to a slow build to a cathartic climax.
Looking at Rays of Darkness’ track list, you might think it’s less impactful than the first, having only four tracks for The Last Dawn’s six. However, the second disc is powerful enough that the memory of The Last Dawn fades pretty quickly. “Recoil/Ignite” opens the second disc in a much similar vein as “The Land Between,” but it quickly veers in a different direction. Instead of cinematic pomp, it builds to some of the angriest music MONO has made. “Surrender” pulls back for a moment, but only in volume. A trumpet plays a forlorn melody against a droning guitar tremolo, the drums and guitars slamming hard on each chord change.
The second half of the disc is where things really turn up. “The Hand That Holds the Truth” opens with a morose figure that turns the regular build-to-climax formula on its head by abruptly exploding into what might be their heaviest moment ever, complete with screamed vocals from envy’s Tetsuya Fukagawa. It then collapses into “The Last Rays,” a near-seven-minute drone track without any discernible instruments.
As fine an entry into the MONO canon as each of these records are though, neither seems complete without the other, in a similar way that each of Thrice’s Alchemy Index EPs are most powerful in context of the rest of the project. Each are solid in their own right, but without the other piece offering a contrast, it’s like hearing one side of a telephone call. As far as I’m concerned, this package containing both is the definitive version of the project, which—when combined—is among MONO’s best work. Shame that it was largely forgotten due to its separation.