Gothenburg’s Monolord turns their focus inward for the emotive stoner doom stomp of Neverending.
Release date: May 29, 2026 | Relapse Records | Bandcamp | Instagram
Doom metal is an evergreen genre. At its purest form, all doom needs to do to succeed is have great riffs and evoke a mood well. Gothenburg’s Monolord understands that fact perfectly. Since their 2014 debut, the band has been churning out well-regarded doom (specifically with that stoner twist), winning over the doom community with their leaden, emotive grooves to the point where I’ve had the pleasure of randomly hearing them in a Lancaster bar (shout out to the bartender who informed my wife and I that “Empress Rising” was the song we were grooving to for 10 minutes).
Come 2026, the trio is dropping their new album Neverending. And to nobody’s surprise, Monolord has once again delivered the goods. Across its eight tracks, Neverending is yet another album chock full of great riffs and strong moods. Now given, Neverending is a much more personal and tangibly gloomy album than its predecessors, but there’s a great sense of internal variety that ensures Monolord never feels stuck in a rut. They balance more trudging, drawn out songs with shorter bursts of rocking energy, but the effect either way is great doom for down moods.
On the more concise end of the spectrum, “Iodine” opens the album with a sense of grandeur before lead single “You Bastard” kicks things fully into gear. Headbang-worthy rhythms and strong hooks clash against lyrics painting an image of both sides of suicide, and it makes for a heart wrenching track that’ll get lodged in your head anyway. “Crystal Bridge” leans heavily into hard rock swagger at first, before opening into spacious psychedelia to underpin guitarist Thomas Jäger’s great voice. “The Masque” evokes a more somber melodicism with cleaner guitar backings, which “Invisible” likewise thrives on.
Neverending‘s longer tracks likewise feel distinct from one another yet consistent in mood, while opening more ground for experimentation. “Inside a Collider” reminds me heavily of Monolord‘s recently reactivated Relapse labelmates Warning, thriving on small variations of a single theme wrung out into a despondent, lengthy dirge. The delightfully-titled “Oozing Wound”, meanwhile, expands on the psych underpinnings of the preceding “Crystal Bridge” with some more spaced out trippy bridges connecting crushing riffs. Closer “It’s Neverending” may be the biggest surprise, effectively leaning into death-doom with the guest growls of Jörgen Sandström, while Jäger heads up the lighter and more melodious passages.
Front to back, though, there’s a sense of melancholy that ties together all of Neverending with total consistency. The variety of ways that Monolord manifests that mood while remaining fully within the norm for doom metal is refreshing, given how lesser bands in the genre can quickly become a slog. I feel one of the keys to Neverending is the very live sound the band manages. Guitar overdubs aren’t too overwhelming, and at more than one point the bass of Mika Häkki becomes the main driver of the riffs while Jäger pulls off a deft solo (to say nothing of the great drum work of Esben Willems). The tones are thick and crushing, yet clear throughout, and there’s a definite sense that any song on Neverending will translate perfectly into live settings when the band hits the road.
Monolord knows the score when it comes to doom, and Neverending is yet another jewel in their crown. It’s an album well worth hearing whether you’re into doom for its titular mood or just after some crunchy riffwork. Monolord‘s approach is cohesive and evocative, and the trio sounds positively locked in after nearly a decade and a half playing together. Neverending may not bring much of anything new to the table for a seasoned fan of doom or stoner metal, but they do the sound damn well. And really, what more could you ask for?
