"MONNO is one of europe’s most interesting and innovative avant-garde band at the moment" CRYPTIC MADNESS
"A new record by MONNO is always a tectonic event in the world of avant rock. (…) They have left their marks on many music fanatics skin by being unpredictable, consequential and without compromise" MONOCHROME
"The band butter their sandwiches with blood, replenish their thermos with Black-Death whiskey and set out on a trudge through the muddy swamps of sludge, doom and drone." TOKAFI
"The noise of the end of the world and the silence which follows. MONNO is Philip K. Dick transcribed into sound, Norman Spinrad into sonic textures and J. G Ballard in low-end vibrations" CHMAFU
Recorded by Roli Mossiman, former Swans drummer and mastermind producer ( Young Gods, The The, Celtic Frost, New Order, Skinny Puppy,..), during some bleak and cold December days in a Polish farm, and mastered by James Plotkin, CHEVAL OUVERT is probably MONNO's most accomplished achievement to date as well as their most adventurous and challenging opus.
After sharing the bill with fellow musicians like Knut, Isis, Jesu, Lightning Blot, Melt Banana, Zu, Asva, Todd, Shit & Shine, Marduk or Tony Conrad on the occasion of the 150+ concerts given over the last years, Drummer Marc Fantini, bassist Derek Shirley, Electronic musician & vocalist Gilles Aubry and electrified tenor sax maestro Antoine Chessex felt the need to come back to studio work. Results a powerful though dark and introspective piece of pure sonic radicalism. CHEVAL OUVERT immerses the listener into a brutal typhoon of intense abstraction. A wild ride on a furiously galloping horse that finds itself torn into pieces by human destruction. Monolithic stabs of distorted saxophone, infinite loops of electronic madness and the devastating pairing of a melting low-end bass and mammoth-like drums resulting in a rock solid wall of ancestral evoking frequencies.
