Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined

Tokyo, Japan's Mono are a peculiar group. While most bands offer up their sincerest and most genuine recordings in their infancy and spend the rest of their careers trying desperately to rediscover their youthful energy, Mono's trajectory has been quite the opposite.

Their early recordings are a visceral homage to their past and present heroes - the documents of a band boasting an impressive symphony of sound in spite of their relatively small line-up. These days, they have become one of the most passionately aggressive rock bands of the last decade, executing their soaring crescendos, titanic sheets of distortion and dark melodies with the delicacy and precision of a folded paper crane.

Mono are driven to create for the hope of what that creativity can bring. Often described as "the soundtrack to the end of the world," their hopeful new direction can more aptly be the soundtrack to a new beginning.