The Monitor

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• 

  2010

  James

  "This is a war we can’t win, after 10,000 years it’s still us against them” brings the theme of The Monitor into sharp focus. The album turns the American Civil War into a metaphor for depression, self-loathing, addiction, and broken-hearted youth and young manhood with total emotional excess. Patrick Stickles throws everything into the songs—bagpipes, spoken-word intros, punk riffs, literary references, drunken gang vocals—and somehow it's his own conviction and monumental despondency that makes the songs so memorable. You’ll pump your fist, play air guitar, shout along, and rally around this man's gloom. Anthems like “A More Perfect Union” and “The Battle of Hampton Roads” feel huge because the emotional stakes genuinely are. It’s messy, ambitious rock music that relies on catharsis being overwhelming.