Music Essays: MONOTONIX

Tonight in America, Monotonix will melt someone’s mind into brain paste. Believe it. It happened to me.

story by David Bevan

It was late on Sunday at Cake Shop, under the asphalt of New York City’s Lower East Side. Frontman Ami Shalev was shirtless and crawling on top of his drummer Gever’s head, then he was crawling on top of the head of the dude standing next to me. With just inches between our faces, we locked eyes, and amidst the frenzy, everything slowed for a moment. Before the crowd pulled Shalev away by his feet, he let out a demon howl that may have finally made a man out of me. Then I noticed my jeans were wet. But I think it was just from the beer bath Shalev gave the audience a few minutes earlier, when I was standing in the splash zone.

Since Monotonix began playing in their native Tel Aviv in late 2005, the bass-less garage punk trio has already completed six stateside tours, even with only the Body Language EP on US shelves. The band have taken to America’s highways and shitholes because this is the country where their sound was born. “You should do what’s most natural where it’s natural,” guitarist Yonatan Gat explains. “It’s very natural to eat falafel in Tel Aviv, and it’s very natural to play a rock & roll show in New York City.”

When performing live, Monotonix transforms from three fairly normal guys into one very wild, very hairy beast. Spilling into the crowd, they climb onto of any available limb, back or bar in front of them. The mission is to bring kids closer together and closer to feeling free, even if that means dumping garbage on them or setting them aflame. In broken—but perhaps even more effective—English, Gever provides their manifesto of sorts: “To have it groovy, to have it power, to have it live.”

Beyond that, Monotonix’s story is the timeless rock & roll tale of the musician as road warrior. They play crappy clubs. They play neglected cities in Delaware and Eastern Pennsylvania. They play at Ivy League colleges. They play at state schools. They sleep on floors and couches. They lug merch. They wow landmarks like Ian McKaye and David Berman. They eat gas station junk food. They draw blood. They piss off sound guys and venue owners. They defy description. And they don’t just surf crowds, they surf giant tsunamis of positive vibrations.

This visual essay documents four days with the band in America’s Northeast.