From now on, I'm going to cut my intros for my reviews short as lately I find it harder to think of what to say to kick off a review. That will change if it's a band I really like but if I'm unfamiliar with them or have nothing to say, then I won't bother with an intro just like with today's review so let us dive into today's offering.

The subject of this review is the debut album from American heavy metal band MONOLITH entitled "Against the Wall of Forever" and my goal today is to review it and see if this is a debut worthy enough for me to get excited for this bands future material or if I should stay away from it. MONOLITH are fairly new to the music scene as they only formed 2 years ago but in that time they have recorded a split 7" vinyl with VOYAGE OF SLAVES as well as a self-released a cassette EP but now the time has come for the world to hear their debut studio CD including myself.

Usually I like to start off with any positives I can find in an album especially if it's a debut album as this can make or break a band and probably the listener too depending on if they like it or not. Do I enjoy it? The answer to that is a big fat no. Where do I even start? I guess I should begin with the sound which the general aim was to make references to classic 70's and 80's metal which can be good sometimes if you remember to add a modern sound to the music but if you forget about that entirely then what you end up producing is an average second rate release that sounds retro and boring and that is the case here as I found the production and the overall sound to be a bit too average and mediocre for my liking

The average production is just the first of many faults with this release as the performance is not really that great either. It's not awful per say but I expect better from debut releases as I will always look forward to new material from the band. I'm not sure that's the case here as the music sounds like it's suffering from a poor case of production blues, and the vocals can be very much hit and miss throughout with it. This leans more towards the miss side of things as there is nothing good I can say about the vocals other then it's too scream-y, too growl-y and a bit too dull for my tastes. This further ruins a release I didn't really like to begin with but I will say that thank god the tracks are fairly short-ish because if they were any longer. My ears and my sanity would fall into an even deeper coma.

Bottom line, I wasn't really all that impressed or blown away by this debut from MONOLITH as it has a huge amount of problems which may be okay for the average listener who doesn't matter how it sounds just as long as they enjoy the album which I do respect but personally, I'm not sure this is a band I will keep on following or check out new material from so that is why I will be scoring it low today.