Monuments Return to India This Month

To say that U.K. metallers Monuments have had a long wait in returning to India is to say they’ve been ever patient. After making their debut performance in the country in 2013, it’s seven years later that the quintet will be back for two shows – Mumbai on January 29th and Bengaluru on February 2nd.

While it was the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur’s annual college festival Springfest which hosted Monuments in January 2013, the band behind mind-bending songs like “I, The Creator” and “Stygian Blue” were called back to perform at BITS Pilani Goa’s festival Waves at the end of 2013. With issues arising around that visit led them to call it off, the band was by then already different – featuring vocalist Chris Barretto (previously of djent frontrunners Periphery).

Monuments are now three albums down – Degenerate, The Amanuensis and in 2018, Phronesis. They’ve also had their share of lineup shuffles, most recently reuniting with original drummer Mike Malyan and calling in vocalist Andy Cizek to replace Barretto. The band will perform at the recently opened antiSOCIAL in Mumbai on January 29th, followed by Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru’s college festival Pravega pro nite on February 2nd.

While support for the Mumbai gig is yet to be announced, fusion prog band Pineapple Express will perform alongside Monuments at Pravega. The Bengaluru college for its part has previously booked the likes of American metallers Intronaut and British metallers TesseracT for previous editions of Pravega pro nite. Hari P Naarayanan, ex-pro nites co-ordinator of Pravega, says, “Monuments is stylistically a shift towards the heavier side of prog, moving from TesseracT, and while this isn’t necessarily representative of our future directions, we’re choosing to acknowledge that heavier metal has a strong following here, backed up by excellent turnouts for festivals like Bangalore Open Air. In bringing Monuments to India, we’ve committed  to accommodating an act that delivers on the heaviest of riffs and the most soaring of choruses; true diversity within the modern metal community.”

Following their India shows, Monuments will head out on a Europe tour with fellow Brit metallers Heart of a Coward, followed by a North America tour alongside Indian/American prog peers Skyharbor.

Monuments India 2019

January 29th – antisocial, Mumbai (get tickets here)

February 2nd – Gymkhana, IISc, Bengaluru (Pravega Pro nite) (get tickets here)

Watch the video for “Leviathan” below.