Buzz

“If you can’t have a good time at a Monads show, then we have serious concerns about your mental health.”
www.offbroadwaystl.com

“The Monads are too spirited and too irreverent to be denied a little corner in your inner hillbilly-hooligan’s heart. Like Split Lip Rayfield before them, the band members stomp all over that infinitesimally thin line between deconstruction and dementia, using banjo, fiddle, acoustic guitar and doghouse bass the way rabid hounds might use a burrow full of bunnies.”
Roy Kasten, 88.1 KDHX FM, Riverfront Times

“While the roots of the Monads’ old-timey sound is firmly planted in the soil of traditional bluegrass music, the band’s barnburning, desperately urgent songs combine an amalgam of styles, from traditional country blues to punk and rockabilly. The group’s latest full-length album, Ornery, is one of the best local releases of the past year, weaving the band’s many-stranded sounds into a tight sonic fabric.” 
Riverfront Times, Best Of St. Louis Edition (Best Bluegrass 2008)

“This act may have just become kings of the musical genre, ‘Speed-Folk.’ If the Pogues were raised in Kentucky and listened to The Buzzcocks and Bill Monroe at whiskey- soaked fiddling contests, they would have become The Monads. With knee-slappin tunes about Mississippi and punk-anthem choruses, The Monads had people up and dancing. Their exuberance was genuine, and you couldn’t help but feel that this is what music used to be like; an irresistibly joyful and energetic connection between the audience and the songs. Of course, who couldn’t love songs about whiskey?”
Lyndsay M. Johnson, Hotspotvibe.com

“Had Gogol Bordello had roots in the wilds of Missouri instead of soaking up Eastern Europe influences, the band might have produced an album like the Monads’ Ornery. Buoyed by nimble electric fiddle and barnstormin’ banjo – along with thumping upright bass and sterling harmonies – the quartet’s old-time saloon-rock and gypsy-twang is a hootin’ and hollerin’ good time.”
Annie Zaleski, Riverfront Times

“The Monads are the best band in St. Louis.”
Mike Leahy of 7 Shot Screamers

“Attach “punk-grass” or whatever prefixes you want to the bluegrass of this St. Louis, Missouri band, but they are not necessary. At the end of the night it’s all just straight, unfiltered bluegrass with no need for buzzword promotion to get the crowd interested. It speaks highly of a group of acoustic musicians that they can hold their own with big loud rock bands, and all without the aid of a drummer.”
Whatzup (Fort Wayne, IN)

“Like a bluegrass version of the Pogues, the band plays traditional instruments in a full-throttled, punk rock manner.”
Matt Fernandes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

“Ornery falls somewhere between whiskey-soaked bluegrass, traditional country stomps and scorching twang-punk. It also nearly comes close to capturing the band’s incendiary live gigs. (The) Monads show has evolved to become a hoedown infused with punk energy and rabble-rousing attitude. It’s reminiscent of the gypsy-punk of Gogol Bordello and goth-twang of O’Death – and certainly one of the most unique concert experiences in town.”
Annie Zaleski, Riverfront Times