French sludge/doom outfit Monarch have a new full-length on the way. Never Forever, the follow-up to 2014's Sabbracadaver LP (and 2015's covers EP Sacrifice Your Parents, Satan Wants You To), arrives September 22 via Profound Lore. As evidenced by the haunting first single "Song to the Void," the band's latest album finds them tempering an already infernal racket with churning, turgid dream pop. Bandleader Emilie Bresson's eerie vocals remain foreboding and shadow-steeped, and they possess an ethereal, delicate quality heretofore unexplored in Monarch's broader body of work, more reminiscent of Chelsea Wolfe than Noothgrush.
The same can be said for the song's surrealistic, stop-motion video, which doubles as an album trailer. The black-and-white visual mixes the cheery with the morbid, juxtaposing images of fields and butterflies with dark rituals and creepy ruins. To further illustrate the schism, Bresson starts off the video clutching a balloon, and ends up holding a noose. Check it out below.