godless god, the new album by A Place Called Hell, feels like a new beginning. The duo, made up of rapper Monzy The Terrible and producer Dylan Land, switched up their sound and dove head first into a mix of hardcore riffs and punchy raps. For seasoned fans, this change didn’t come out of nowhere. Tastes of Monzy’s metal musings were already present on their breakthrough last album, No Shimmering Heaven. But while Heaven only teased the sound, godless god puts it at the forefront.
In the span of three years and four albums, A Place Called Hell has fluidly explored various subgenres. Their first two releases, Revenge of Abel and PERMANENT//PROSTHETIC are close to the hip-hop sound of billy woods or pre-Some Rap Songs Earl Sweatshirt. Last year’s No Shimmering Heaven, released on crushr. records, was a way more adventurous album, both sonically and lyrically, as Monzy’s bars took on vulnerability and openness more direct and hitting than before. godless god, on first listen, is a startling jump.
Monzy is not new to either the hip-hop or the hardcore scene. Having worked in both, their vocal delivery is equally chilling and capturing, articulating each bar so clearly he could easily narrate the evening news. Shortly before the Halloween release of their latest album, I sat down with Monzy to talk about the album, their perspective on death, and bonded over our mutual love of The Body.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
How did you start with music and how long has music been a part of your life?
Music’s been in my life pretty much all my life. My mom taught me and my siblings how to sing. Gospel music has been around the house. R&B, jazz and the occasional hip-hop was around, but gospel music was a very big thing in our household. I’ve been doing that since I was seven or eight. Then I got into punk music when I was 14. The first heavy band I gravitated towards was System of a Down. [laughs] It was my brother’s birthday at a bowling alley and a video for Chop Suey came on. I was hooked. From there, I’ve been listening to punk and metal, death metal and hardcore. I taught myself how to play guitar [when] I was 16. A friend of mine wanted to start a post-hardcore band, the whole scene shit was very big at the time and I was very much a part of it, I’m not ashamed to say.
From then I started learning how to write songs, structure and stuff. I wrote my first rap when I was 11, and I ain’t drop anything until 2023. I just wanted to perfect the craft before putting it out there, and sometimes that takes time.
What’s your writing process like? Do you do pen & paper or are you writing in the Notes app?
I primarily do pen and paper. If I’m at work and I come up with a bar, I’ll save it to my Notes app, but then I’ll come up with a whole stanza and then, you know, 10 minutes later I’ll have half a verse done. Most of it is pen and paper, but I have been getting into Notes app writing. It’s just convenient, I always have my phone on me.
How did you and Dylan [Land] find each other? And what’s your relationship like these days?
We talk a lot, still. We don’t see each other every day just because our work schedules are kind of fucked. We live in a capitalist society so we have to work more than we’d like to.
Our former bands used to play with each other a lot. My old guitarist would throw shows at his house, and 95% of [Dylan’s] shows were with us. Since 2021 we just been playing shows together and talking more. We built our friendship before we decided we were gonna make music together. He wanted to venture out more, genre-wise. I was in a punk band, he was in a hardcore/metalcore band and it was just kinda natural, the way we started working together. We started working with a studio here in Aurora [Illinois]. I hit him up like “Hey, I wanna try rapping, I know you produce, let’s get together and see if we can make something”. That day we made a song called 4NR, that he was just gonna throw away but I was like “Nah, bro, I need that”. Two weeks later we dropped it. Originally it was gonna be a 5 song EP, then seven songs later it was an album and we decided we were just gonna keep working together.
Outside of music that dude is my friend, a great guy.
What’s your favourite thing about working with Dylan?
Just the fact that he can take my vision to a whole another level. I’ll present a riff or have a melody in mind and he’ll turn it on his head and fuck it up in the best way possible. That’s why I really like working with Dylan. Not only does he get my vision, he knows how to elevate it.
The two of you have been on quite a run – four albums in three years. After your last album, No Shimmering Heaven, what made you decide to do another one? And how soon after did you start working on it?
Prior to that we already dropped two records in 2023. We dropped [No Shimmering Heaven] on the label crushr. and that really got us a lot more attention from underground-heads. We toured off the album before it came out. As soon as we announced we were going by A Place Called Hell we announced a tour with KILLVONGARD and Tomcantsleep. We wanted to solidify it as mainstays. We put out No Shimmering Heaven last year on 4/20, then I put out a solo record Hello, High Water in December. Lotta different producers, including Dylan, but Dylan mixed the majority of that record for me. And even then we were in the talks of what we’re gonna do next year.
In mid-January we started working on the upcoming album. We have been writing and recording for it since then. We recorded the final track sometime in August. So yeah we have been writing it for six or seven months.
On the last tracks of No Shimmering Heaven, you sound both very sad and very cathartic. Is it scary for you, as a writer, to open up on a song like that? Can you get used to doing that?
No. When I started rapping I had to come to terms with the fact that the more I write the more honest I’m gonna have to be. Just from the fact that once you put out art it’s no longer yours. As far as vulnerability goes, I wanted to see how far I can push that envelope. The whole part of life is growth and the whole point of making art is to get better at it. The way I found myself getting better at it is by becoming more vulnerable. It definitely took some getting used to, but it does help with the art, to make sure it doesn’t suffer in the long run. The more vulnerable the better. I always want to make the final track as memorable as possible. Sometimes that leans more somber and melancholic, but you’re gonna remember it and it’s gonna stick with you. I pay attention to that shit.
I listened to the album yesterday and for me the early standout is the final track. I want to ask about one line there: “I’ve been listening to death since March.” That grabbed me and I wonder what’s the deeper story there.
The way I think about death – it’s people, it’s vices, it’s old behaviours, it’s relationships. For me personally, a lot of those relationships and old vices that I have been dwelling on and learning from them. It’s about growth as a person. Sometimes it’s mourning, sometimes a simple observation. I find it important not to ignore the past, because it is a part of who I am, part of who you are. I can’t live in the past but I can’t ignore the fact that a lot of things in my life shaped me and got me to where I am now. As far as March in specifics, it’s not super far off. [It’s] when I started reflecting and coming to terms with things.
So death, for you, is not only a physical act?
Yeah.
I want to ask about the single from the album, Lepers. It was a big change, sonically, a lot more hardcore than anything you’ve put out before. We’ve had glimpses of it before on No Shimmering Heaven, but now it’s full-on. What made you decide that now is the time to go in this direction?
I don’t know how to produce. Dylan does. I don’t know that shit. I always made it a point, from the first album, to be as involved in the production process as possible. We’re making this album together and I want to make sure we both understand what we want this shit to sound like. As far as the sound itself, I had started listening to-
I was in a very bleak spot when I started writing this album. I’ve been listening to melancholic things and noise records, like Uboa. I was listening to, oh God, is it Orchard of a Shimmering Heaven? The Body and Dis Fig?
Oh yes! Oh my God! That’s such a good album, I love it!
I fucking love that record. But dude, I have always been a fan of this band called Touché Amoré and I have been watching their live sets, and that really inspired the first track on the album, that was also the first song we recorded. Pulling a lot from Godflesh, stuff like that. Even Chat Pile. If I’m not gonna produce I’ll present some riffs. When we recorded the first song, I Will Die, we decided to lean into that. I would present some riffs and he would come up with some fucked-up drums. We wanted this record to sound weird. We always say that music has no rules, and we wanted to push that more and more with our sound, and I think we proved that.
Hardcore music may seem like a universe apart from rap. How do you see it? Is it a different process making songs in one sound or another?
Both those worlds are very similar. Every musician finds their footing. Even the shows, none of that shit’s very far off. Public Enemy and LL Cool J did a show with The Vandals. 2017, Lil Ugly Mane and No Warning did a two week tour. Project Pat played Sound & Fury with God’s Hate and Knocked Loose. Me being in both those worlds and scenes, it’s not hard for me to figure it out sonically. I feel like underground hip-hop nowadays is very genre-bending. If you look at Fatboi Sharif, he’s rapping over noise. Even ELUCID’s last record was experimental as hell. woods, I mean, Red Dust, he’s rapping over a midwest emo track. It’s not that different, it’s just the execution, making it work.
The record is called godless god. What inspired the name?
godless god was a title I came up with before we started writing. I had proposed it to [Dylan] right after we recorded the first song and he was cool with it. To me, it’s not just about religious figures – I mean we go into religious figures a lot on our last records, but it’s more so about people in power. Not just people in power but also people that you trust and you put your faith in. The people that you give power to. What happens when those people abandon you? How do you live in a world without your god? It’s basically asking ‘Where is your god? Where is your safety net?’
People use God as a scapegoat, people use religion as a scapegoat. But it also goes towards politicians and celebrities. That’s what I wanted to tap into. People trusting me with this power. What happens when you’re the one in power and you let someone down? We’re all plagued with that.
No Shimmering Heaven dropped on 4/20 and godless god is dropping on Halloween. What is the significance of these dates to you?
Just funny. [laughs] We make it a point to not take this shit too seriously. Lepers dropped on 9/11. That’s not a coincidence. It’s like, who gives a shit about these holidays. Let’s reverse it, give you something to care about. But also Halloween was fitting for this record, because it is darker in tone, so it made a little more sense.
How do you balance making these dark and heavy records? Do you carry the darkness with you? Does it stay in the studio?
Darkness lives within me, it is in everyone, but I can’t just stay brooding and morose, otherwise I’ll die. [laughs] I make sure I tell my friends I love them, I talk to my mum, smoke pot, I wanna enjoy life. I eat sushi, I’m getting sushi after this. I day drink, I drank a beer today at like 6:40 in the morning. I wanna make sure I give myself a little serotonin before I face what’s really going on. It’s not easy, obviously. There’s a lot going on in this world. It’s kind of insane to open Twitter first thing in the morning and you see dead Palestinian children and ICE – ICE is in Chicago bro!
Yeah I learned about it just now, like 30 minutes before the interview.
I’m not trying to run into ICE. It’s been fuck ICE but n***as don’t realise that they’re coming for you next bro. It’s definitely a challenge to really realize the atrocities of the world, but it’s also very important to make sure you’re smiling. It’s the best gift you can give yourself. A lot of my shit has been about trauma, especially religious trauma, being queer, that’s something that wasn’t easy. But you gotta give yourself time to not just reflect but say, “Hey, I made it out of that.”
Dylan and I are homies. We hang out. Before recording some of these songs we just watched the first two Ice Ages. We watch SpongeBob a lot. All the fuckin’ time. It’s important to remember we’re friends before we’re musicians.
You just spoke at length about what’s important to you, so I want to ask you, what’s the most important thing to you for the listener to take away from this new album?
Don’t let the past die, but also don’t let it define you. I speak a lot about the past, because it does come up as narrative. I do a lot of storytelling, I like to tell stories in my songs, but it’s also very conceptual. Part of it is also that don’t let past things control you, don’t let people in your life control you, don’t let God control you. Keep the past close, but don’t let it consume you.
Do you have a favorite lyric or a verse from the album?
That’s a good question. A verse I’m really proud of, the third verse of Scrooge. I love that song, but that verse I’m really proud of. Also the song Time Healed Nothing. There’s gonna be a feature on there, it’s gonna be so fuckin’ sick. The whole record I’m proud of, obviously, but those two in particular I’m very excited for people to hear.
As far as a specific lyric – fuck. Maybe I’ll get back to you once I find a favorite one. [when I followed up, Monzy said their favorite line comes from the song Learn War: “that monkey’s paw was Murphy’s law/but you learn through war”]
You hinted at features on the album. What is your dream collaboration?
Shit, there’s billy woods, obviously. Both him and ELUCID. But also Justin Broadrick, that’s someone I would love to work with. Lil Ugly Mane would be sick. Fiona Apple! She’s a big influence on my writing, I’d love to work with her.
One of my favorite lyrics of yours is on the song SINZ, where you rap ‘There’s power in getting clean.’ What does that line mean to you?
I was straight edge for 10 years, then I started working at a Starbucks at a college campus. The biggest community college in North America. So that kinda fucked me up. [laughs]
Right now, I haven’t smoked in a couple weeks. Not that I quit, just because I had a bad edible experience that pretty much put me in a psychosis. So I don’t do edibles anymore. Here and there I will smoke flower. I did quit drinking for a while, but a drink here and there is fine. I’m in a good spot where the vices aren’t fucking up my life, whereas before it was a big part of me. I’ve definitely pulled back, because I want to make it to at least 70.
Do you think you’ll still be rapping at 70?
I’m gonna keep rapping until I get bad at it. A lot of n***as don’t stop and they’re terrible now. [laughs] Yeah, LL Cool J needs to chill. Ima ride this motherfucker til the wheels fall off. If you’re not striving to get better you need to stop. I haven’t written my best song yet.
What’s on your playlist?
Right now, I’m listening to the new Earl record, that’s fantastic. I listen to The Impression That I Get by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones a lot. The new Fleshwater record is so fucking good. I saw them last weekend with my homie, great show, they sounded fuckin’ massive. Obviously I’ve been listening to a lot of Armand Hammer, specifically woods.
And a lot of hardcore, honestly. Speed, great band. I like boygenius, I still listen to that record a lot. And as aforementioned, a lot of Chat Pile, noise-rock, old Beck here and there. My shit’s kinda varied right now, but Fleshwater has been on heavy rotation.
Thank you so much for making the time. Any closing remarks?
Free fuckin’ Palestine, free Congo, fuck ICE, fuck Charlie Kirk.
