The Vintage Caravan

Monuments NAPALM Behold the glory of the riff.

It would be difficult to imagine a more appropriate title for album number five from this Icelandic trio; Monuments is immense, primal heavy rock, with the influence of Sabbath, Cream, Zeppelin and sundry protometal bands running deep within its groovy veins. Much like their earlier albums, really, except that this time round there seems to be an even greater focus on strong melodies and songcraft.

Full-flight opener Whispers

reels around an instantly memorable riff and chorus; Dark Times blazes like a psychedelic Iron Maiden; Torn In Two seems, basically, to be a wonderful excuse for a ferocious guitar solo. At eight minutes-plus each, the two cosmic yin and yang standouts, though, must be middle track Forgotten and closer Clarity, the former fast and thrashy with bags of old-school attack, the latter lysergically mellow and dreamy, with a lengthy instrumental ending.

The Vintage Caravan just get better and better. ■■■■■■■■■■