FIGHTING ON

AFTER MEETING THEIR DEMONS ON I’MTHESIN, POST-HARDCORE POWERHOUSE THE BEAUTIFUL MONUMENT FACE THEM HEAD-ON WITH A FOLLOW-UP EQUALLY POWERFUL AND PUNCHY: I’MTHEREAPER.

Having already crushed it at this year’s Download Festival, and sharing the stage with such top-notch acts as Hellions, After Touch and Sleep Talk, The Beautiful Monument are making 2019 their bitch. It’s a breakthrough much deserved for the shred-heavy quartet – especially after a string of hiccups that followed the release of their (violently underrated) 2017 debut, I’mTheSin, like the exodus of more than half their original lineup.

Never ones to cower in the face of defeat, however, the little lords that could have bounded back with the addition of Alex Henderson on guitar and Amy McIntosh on bass. And by way of a new partnership with Grayscale Records, they’re continuing their climb to world domination with I’mTheReaper: a direct sequel to I’mTheSin, and a sure-to-be classic in the hall of grungy, synth-inflicted post-hardcore fame.

You can find an exclusive chat with Henderson on the AustralianGuitar website – for now, let’s vibe on the new LP with founding axewoman Andrea Skoumbri, shall we?

What do Amy and Alex bring to the fold that makes this incarnation of The Beautiful Monument its strongest to date?

We were all friends before they joined the band. Having that connection helped because it wasn’t like we were just jumping straight into the deep end with people where we didn’t know what their personalities were, or how much they actually gave to music. But we knew they were both passionate and would really help our sound, so it was a great transition.

Why was it important for you to keep going down the path that I’mTheSin set up, rather than do something completely different?

We finished recording I’mTheSin at the end of 2016, and that’s when we decided that the next album would be I’mTheReaper. The titles were both taken from the lyrics of one of the singles from I’mTheSin, “Sins”, and the line is, “I’m the sin / I’m the reaper.” So since we called our first album I’m TheSin, we thought it might be cool if we continued that and did I’mTheReaper as our next one.

So in going from Sin to Reaper, how did you want The Beautiful Monument to evolve?

We didn’t give it any expectations – we just kind of did what we did. We went and did all of our writing with Sonny Truelove again, because we really liked what he did for I’mTheSin. And it came out… I don’t want to say better than we hoped, because we didn’t hope for anything to begin with – we were just really stoked with it. And we were lucky enough that Amy and Alex both fully backed the songs and loved the music, because they weren’t around when we went in and recorded the album.

When did you actually head into the studio?

We started at the end of 2017, and finished around the start of 2018. It was a long process to get to the release date because we did the first chunk of the recording with Sonny, but inbetween the sessions, he moved to Nashville to pursue a career with STL Tones. And so the rest of it was done with Christopher Vernon – he’s a producer and an engineer, and he also plays in Belle Haven and Better Half – and he and Sonny were working together to finish off the album. We recorded the final instrumental parts of it here with Chris, and then Lizi actually flew over to Nashville to finish the vocals with Sonny.

What guitars were you ripping out on in the studio for this record?

It was all recorded on a Fender Jaguar, which was the same guitar I used on I’mTheSin.

What is it about that Jag that made it the perfect axe for these albums?

I don’t play Fender guitar live – I don’t even own a Fender – but that was the studio guitar Sonny had at the time in 2016, and it just sounded good, so we continued using it for I’mTheReaper.

Having seen you guys play a few times, I can vouch for your Ibanez being an absolute beast. What can you tell us about that guitar?

I actually looked for it for a good eight months, because I was trying to find one second-hand. It has this killer white trim around the outside, and that’s what I’ve been using live since the day I bought it. It’s a Japanese-made RG – one of the Prestige models with Bareknuckle pickups.

So how do you make the transition from playing a Jag in the studio to an Ibanez onstage?

We run Kempers, and Sonny has recreated all of the studio tones that we used on the records – all the leads and all the rhythms, to be specific – and we play those same exact tones live.

What is it about the Kemper that you find is crucial to your live setup?

I used to run a big board with my EVH and cab, but the Kempers have just significantly reduced our gear and our setup time – we just chuck the Kempers in the car and we’re good to go. It’s made touring so much easier because we can just plug and play; one of the biggest worries for me when I was playing live was, “Is my gear going to work today? Is one of these pedals going to fuck up, or is one of these tiny patch cables going to decide not to work? And then if it does, do I have the time to sit there and figure out which patch cable, out of the jungle of them, is the one that’s messing up?”

I was running my board through a MIDI setup, too, and it was programmed to my specific EVH head, so if something did mess up, I couldn’t just take someone else’s head and play through it.