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 has been quite the opposite. Their early recordings are a visceral homage to their past and present heroes -- the documents of a band boasting an impressive symphony of sound in spite of their relatively small line-up. These days, they have become one of the most passionately aggressive rock bands of the last decade, executing their soaring crescendos, titanic sheets of distortion and dark melodies with the delicacy and precision of a folded paper crane. Shedding their past and looking towards the future, Mono now find their inspirations not just from song, but from story as well -- particularly Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the famous tale of a young Japanese girl who developed leukemia in 1955 from the effects of radiation caused by the bombing of Hiroshima. Sadako's closest friend, visiting her in the hospital, recounted the Japanese legend that the gods bestow marvelous wishes unto anyone who successfully folds one-thousand paper... more...